Day 70 of “Le Tour du numéro 7 de Saville-row en 80 traductions”

[Harpold, Terry Alan]

Dear fellow travelers,

 

We enter Day 70 of “Le Tour du numéro 7 de Saville-row en 80 traductions” – https://80traductions.blogspot.com – and the machinations of our journey to nowhere are fracturing a little more and also wandering more from the primary theme. (See https://80traductions.blogspot.com/2022/10/prologue.html for an overview of the voyage’s rationale and method.)

 

Ce travail ne reflète pas la philosophie de l'eau et de l'énergie.

 

– This evocative though very compressed translation of the chapter’s original title – “Dans lequel Phileas Fogg et Passepartout s’acceptent réciproquement l’un comme maître, l’autre comme domestique” – seems locked in now, it hasn’t changed significantly since Day 48. (Spoiler alert : it won’t change very much by the end of the journey.) Why this should be the most durable phraseme – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phraseme – of the chapter probably merits a particular investigation.

 

Phyllis Fogg parle bien l'anglais, est beau, a une forte personnalité. et relation heureuse. Big Byron a mille ans comme faire pipi sa tête barbe et barbe sous le menton.

 

– “Big” Byron is new, probably just a literalizing version of “le grand Byron,” who has been with us all along. The rest of the sentence continues to syntactically mangle the description and the anatomical position of Byron’s beautiful beard (alas, not since about Day 50 made of butter and not since about Day 60 made of bees). And it introduces a un petit élément de l’impudence via an apparent confusion of the poet’s long life with his voiding his bladder. (Spoiler alert, again: this will, er, pass quickly.) Phyllis is still having felicitous relations with someone.

 

Mais il n'y a pas de fourrure anglaise à Londres.

 

– What, exactly, English furs may be is unclear. Maybe they have something to do with the ever-changing beards of Byron and Phileas/Phyllis? Subsequent translations will convert them to flowers (fleurs), which seems a more peaceable, animal-friendly solution.

 

Rosa n'est pas membre de la Writers Guild ou de toute organisation officielle. Un grand centre pour les arts et les sciences. De la société littéraire à la société anthropologique Et la plupart des maisons en Angleterre sont propres.

 

– Rosa is, then, another of Phileas/Phyllis/etc.’s many pseudonyms? Our hero is a man of a thousand faces.

 

– Long gone are the many institutions of which Phileas Fogg was said to *not* be a member – “Son nom n’avait jamais retenti dans un collège d’avocats, ni au Temple, ni à Lincoln’s-inn, ni à Gray’s-inn. Jamais il ne plaida ni à la Cour du chancelier, ni au Banc de la Reine, ni à l’Échiquier, ni en Cour ecclésiastique. Il n’était ni industriel, ni négociant, ni marchand, ni agriculteur. Il ne faisait partie ni de l’Institution royale de la Grande-Bretagne, ni de l’Institution de Londres, ni de l’Institution des Artisans, ni de l’Institution Russell, ni de l’Institution littéraire de l’Ouest, ni de l’Institution du Droit, ni de cette Institution des Arts et des Sciences réunis, qui est placée sous le patronage direct de Sa Gracieuse Majesté…” But Phyllis *is*, we learn, a member of the May Development Club, whatever that is. Around Day 60, our hero went for a time by the name “Phyllis May,” so perhaps it’s a club with only one member? (Groucho Marx’s famous comment, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member,” comes to mind.) The Reform-Club has been gone since about Day 55.

 

– No. 7 de Saville-row continues to be “pas très bon.” But at least most English homes are kept clean.

 

Ce fou a également gagné des matchs mais a laissé beaucoup de portefeuilles pour des œuvres caritatives. Cloud, également connu sous le nom de Hatzilla, ne joue clairement pas, il se bat. affaiblir le système immunitaire mais pas fort, pas fort et je déteste la nature.

 

– A *lot* going on here. Phileas/Phyllis/Rosa, is nutty but still a fine player at something – whist was, famously, his/her game, but that detail has been missing for a while now – and he/she is still spreading the earnings around for charitable causes. But the pseudonyms are multiplying: Cloud (a charming literalization of “Fogg”) is, it seems also known by the name “Hatzilla” The –zilla affix is a kind of readymade signifier of monstrosity. So, he’s the King of the hat-wearing monsters? And how would he rate in combat against Big Byron? Will we ever see the epic  film of daikaijū battle, Hatzilla vs. Big Byron? (I would pay good money to see *that*.)  

 

– In the original version of the chapter Fogg ceremoniously dons his hat before exiting the scene at chapter’s end – “Phileas Fogg se leva, prit son chapeau de la main gauche, le plaça sur sa tête avec un mouvement d’automate et disparut sans ajouter une parole” – but long ago on our journey the hat transformed into a coat, a dress, a cloak. It’s nice to see it back.

 

– And then there’s something going on having to do with a slight weakening of the immune system – feels a little too timely, that – and someone disliking nature, but the significance of the dislike, or who is doing the disliking, isn’t clear. (Final spoiler alert: this will become another durable phraseme all the way to the end.)

 

Terry Harpold

Associate Professor of English

Director, Imagining Climate Change

 

https://people.clas.ufl.edu/tharpold/

https://imagining-climate.clas.ufl.edu

https://sciencefiction.group.ufl.edu

 

"Have you noticed my pink brains?

 You can see 'em work."