In French, each of the three sections of this sentence is about the same in length and has (by my count) three main stresses or points of emphasis. Here is the version by Frank Davison: “The advent of Augustin Meaulnes, coinciding as it did with my recovery from the ailment, marked the beginning of a new life.”Īnd by Robin Buss: “The arrival of Augustin Meaulnes, coinciding with my being cured of the disability, was the start of a new life.” L’arrivée d’Augustin Meaulnes, qui coïncida avec ma guérison, fut le commencement d’une vie nouvelle. Here’s an example, that I looked at in my previous post, now with the original to compare with: Many translators seem not to care much about this at all, and that’s a great pity. In translation I think that rhythm is an important and overlooked element, that which carries the poetry of the language, even in prose. Sometimes I do think that the translators could have made better choices. The sounds and rhythms flowed more harmoniously than in the relatively clunky English version, and were more in tune with the melancholic tale. This novel was a good choice for my level of comprehension, because the sentence structure was straightforward, there was little in the way of flowery description and no discernible wordplay or irony, and isolated vocabulary words were easy to look up using my e-reader (what a godsend that has been!) I can certainly recommend this novel for intermediate learners who want to read something in the original language, and I wish I’d been assigned it in college as I think I would have enjoyed it much more than most of the other set texts.Īesthetically, I did find this time through a more satisfying experience than reading the English translation.

So it was an interesting experience to read it in French. In my prior post about the English version, I commented that the language sometimes seemed to me either awkward or dull, and that made it hard for me to understand why the novel was so beloved. I am not going to attempt to write in French here, but am going to focus on some questions of language and translation.

Le grand meaulnes english