Nous avons publié sur le blog trois analyses du livre de Grant Hamilton, Les trucs d’anglais qu’on a oublié de vous enseigner, et maintenant nous lui donnons le dernier mot.
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L’auteur, Grant Hamilton, Président d’Anglocom, Inc., bureau de traductions, Québec, rédacteur-traducteur agréé-réviseur de langue, vice-président de la division Entreprises de traduction de l’American Translators Association (ATA), membre du conseil de l’Ordre des traducteurs, terminologues et interprètes agréés du Québec, président de la division du Québec du programme Le Prix du Duc d’Édimbourg et formateur en traduction.
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A few thoughts by Grant Hamilton
English is a wonder and a joy, a simple language in some respects, but full of twists and turns and fine distinctions that make it very difficult to master. As a translator I have noticed how opaque it can be for non-native speakers. English contains so many exceptions and oddities that even those who speak the language well get tripped up by it. Often clients point out things I would never notice, but which are truly strange when you stop to consider them—like the expression “every other day.” How can you count “other days”? Translate it literally into French, and you realize how unusual it must sound to francophone ears. That was the inspiration for Les trucs d’anglais qu’on a oublié de vous enseigner. It fills the knowledge gap that virtually all francophones seem to share. Most every lesson in it is inspired by a particular person or event. Some of the subjects are very practical and business oriented, such as when to put an accent on Quebec. Others are drawn from life events, such as a francophone friend of mine who inadvertently used “paf” instead of “bang” to describe walking into a wall, despite speaking otherwise unaccented and exceptionally fluent English. An article on onomatopoeia was born! My favorite chapter is “L’Amérique à table.” It was inspired by an offhand comment by a friend about how “American” all the menus sound in the United States. I started nosing around on the Internet, and it’s true—menus are quite different in the United States! They reflect a whole other culture and approach to food. Another fun chapter to write was the one on the use of the word “French” in English. The book does not seek to target Quebec readers in particular. In fact, I made a conscious effort to find examples from Europe when I could. But there is no denying that the raw materials were drawn from Quebec, my home and linguistic environment. Les trucs d’anglais qu’on a oublié de vous enseigner has another goal: explaining the underpinnings of English, the basic way we think and speak. For instance, it’s all very well to know that English uses phrasal verbs, but if you have never grasped how the word “up” changes the meaning of the root verb, you will never instinctively feel the difference between “write a report” and “write up a report” as anglophones do. So without giving magic formulas or one-size-fits-all solutions, the book attempts to convey the spirit of English—how concrete and informal and verb-packed it is. Just explaining the philosophy of a language can be enough to lift second language speakers to new heights of proficiency. One spinoff from the book has been Anglocom’s @anglais Twitter feed, which now offers more than 1,000 English translation and writing tips to browse. It’s like a collection of little knowledge capsules you digest one a time, twice a day. A complete indexed compendium of past tweets will be coming out in book form in 2012, combined with tweets by François Lavallée of Magistrad fame. If readers care to see any other materials I have produced, I would urge them to visit the FYI page of my firm’s website, www.anglocom.com, which offers downloadable translation tools as well as articles such as “Creative Thinking: Doing What a Machine Cannot,” “The Value of Conferences,” and “Translation in Canada.” I also anticipate having in article in an upcoming issue of ATA’s The Chronicle entitled “Translating for Quebec: 8 Essential Rules to Follow.”
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