Lost in Translation: Menus and Restaurants

Posted on April 30, 2013 by A French American Life

I see these restaurants in France all the time:

Because all Asian food is pretty much the same, right? And no, this is not some trendy fusion restaurant. Out of curiousity, I tried one once. It was a bland, fast food type of cuisine that amounted to soggy vegetables and meat bathed in either soy or teriyaki sauce. Nothing like the widely varied and often spicy dishes that could be offered from any of these countries. For a country so renowned for its food, France has a lot to learn about the cuisine offered outside its own borders!

Poorly translated menu items are part of the charm of traveling abroad. We had some classics in China; I lost track of how many times we said, “What the what!?” Here are a few gems:

Then there was the beachside restaurant in a small Cote d’Azur village where I’m pretty sure they weren’t really serving “wolf” and where I decided to avoid the “crusty of salmon” altogether.

Here, in the U.S., we find plenty of mistakes. There’s the most obvious: the use of the word “entrée.” It means the first course, entering the meal if you will. But in the U.S. we almost always use it for the list of main dishes. Then there’s a restaurant near us called “La Café.” Decent food, but my husband gets a nervous tick every time we pass it because “café” is masculine, so it should be “Le Café.” Gender mistakes don’t bother Americans much because we don’t use them. But imagine the irritation that those of us grammar lovers experience when someone uses a double negative: “I don’t have no bread,” and you can see how my husband must feel.

At a nice, upscale San Diego restaurant my husband ordered the bouillabaisse. He used the French pronunciation, boo-ya-bais, or for the phonetically inclined: [bujabes]. The waitress asked him to repeat himself several times, then exclaimed:

“Oh! You mean the bool-a-bass-ey!”

Yes. That’s it exactly.

It can be a challenge, trying to order a croissant or any other French food here. My tongue wants to use the French pronunciation, but then I get looked at either in confusion, or I get a big eye roll because clearly, I’m being pretentious. Using the American pronunciation ensures that I will be understood, but it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

I’d love other examples people have experienced with menu items that got lost in translation. Bring them on!

Belle Ile

Posted on April 18, 2013 by A French American Life

I can’t resist posting more photos from Bretagne/Brittany. These are from a trip we took to Belle Ile, just off the coast. Beautiful, windblown place. We rented a tiny little “Zest” and scooted all over the island, braving the wind and rain! We ate our fill of crepes, galettes, and drank plenty of cider. Great trip!

Harbor entrance at Le Palais

Le Palais

La Pointe de Poulains

Sailboat at Ster-Vraz

Ster Vraz

Excellent Galettes

Mussels clinging to the rocks on the Plage de Donnant

Lunch at Crêperie Coton

French Nationality, and More Bretagne

Posted on April 16, 2013 by A French American Life

My husband and I are working on getting my French citizenship. Surprise: there are many complicated steps to the process and the instructions are difficult to decipher. At times, the steps seem convoluted simply for the sake of being difficult. So we emailed the man in charge at the local embassy. He will only communicate via email; he will not accept phone calls or appointments. In our email, we tried to clarify a few points we were confused on after our research on their website. He sent us a form letter back, politely inviting us to refer to their website for answers to our questions.

Oh, the French.

Today, I go to the Alliance Française to take an exam that will determine if my French is at a level adequate enough to become a citizen. Will I be worthy?

The hope is that if I am a citizen, our family can easily go to France for extended periods during which I can work there, and that all of us will have the right to move freely, or stay, in France and Western Europe. Plus, I think it would be really cool to have dual citizenship.

So, I’ll post some more photos of my beloved Bretagne, and then get back to the stack of paperwork that is French bureaucracy at its finest!

One of the great things about traveling in Bretagne, especially when you get away from the bigger cities like Nantes or Rennes, is that much of Bretagne is visited mainly by French tourists, if at all. It’s off the beaten path enough that it remains more authentic, untouched.

Flowers growing on an old stone wall

Sunset at low tide

Locmariaquer

St. Cado, one of the most photographed homes, because the tide isolates it

One of the most photographed homes in St Cado because the tide isolates it

Quimper

Benodet

Concarneau

German bunker from WWII

Hay! Hey! (That’s for my brother)

Fresh caught oysters

Locmariaquer

Mmmm

Catch of the day at the outdoor market in Locmariaquer

Bretagne, Je t’aime

Posted on April 12, 2013 by A French American Life

I love Bretagne (Brittany, for the anglophones). Where Paris is measured, even severe, Bretagne is untamed, free, running wild. It’s a land of legends and history: Megaliths, Fairies, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Bretagne first gave us crepes, galettes (savory crepes, made with buckwheat), and French apple cider. What’s not to love?

My husband’s family has a summer home in a small Breton village at the opening of the Golfe du Morbihan. When we visit them during the summer, we tend to escape to their home here rather than swelter in Paris. The last several trips we’ve enjoyed mostly sunny days, which last from 5 in the morning until 10 at night. We spend our days riding bikes through overgrown pastures and past flower covered rock walls that are hundreds of years old, dipping our toes into the Atlantic, and eating fresh oysters that the neighbor harvests. And, of course, crepes, galettes, and cider. Every time I suggest staying there and never returning to our “real” lives, my husband warns me that I’m not experiencing the “real” Brittany.

“There’s a reason everything here is so green and overgrown, Carol,” he tells me.

I tell him he can’t burst my bubble.

Here are a few photos:

My favorite spot on Ile Aux Moines, in the Golfe du Morbihan

Golfe du Morbihan

Traditional home, looks straight out of a fairy tale to me

Traditional home, straight out of a fairy tale

Winner! Best French Mullet

Port de St. Goustan

My hubby and me, making crepes

Carnac

Breton humor

On our bike ride

A dolmen and a menhir (megaliths)

Hey, France, Why So Glum?

Posted on March 28, 2013 by A French American Life

Yet another article, this one from The Guardian, is highlighting the French tendency toward melancholy. In this study, people living in Iran and Afghanistan felt more optimistic about the upcoming year than the French. Stop and think about that for a moment.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about French tristesse. What gives, mes amis? You have a beautiful country, a rich history, great food, tons of vacation, free healthcare, free higher education….

Of course, many of my countrymen, particularly those of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-and-get-over-it variety, might say that all these entitlements, read socialism, inevitably lead to misery. I don’t buy it. Look at other European nations, some even more left leaning than France, and many of them report much higher levels of happiness. Besides, we in the “Land of the Free” fare none to well on happiness scales – often we are right up there (or down there, I suppose) with France in terms of feelings of well-being.

The article doesn’t delve into why the French are so gloomy. So I showed it to my husband and asked for his thoughts. His snarky response: “Because we know better. Life sucks and no one is fooling us.”

That’s in keeping with Olivier Magny’s Stuff Parisians Like. He writes in the chapter titled Complaining:

“In Paris, enthusiasm is considered a mild form of retardation. If you are happy, you must be stupid. On the other hand, if you complain, you must be smart.” (pg. 135)

Well, they do say ignorance is bliss. Still, I would argue that the most enlightened among us are the ones who recognize how tough life is but still manage to be happy despite it all.

I’ve observed the French and their tendency toward melancholy and negativity for years now, and I enjoy playing amateur sociologist trying to decipher the causes. My own conclusions are biased, unscientific, and based on a small sample size, but I think there is something here, in this quote from the article:

“Senik claims that the “French paradox” – the fact that the country’s general prosperity does not appear to translate into the happiness of its citizens – can be explained by ‘mental attitudes that are acquired in school or other socialisation instances, especially during youth.’”

Happinesss, quality of life, perceptions of well-being – so many factors play in, and it is so much more complicated than it should be. Especially for the French, with their uncanny ability to turn even the most uncomplicated thing into something convoluted and impossible to decipher.

Thoughts? Why are the French (and why are we, here, in the U.S.) so glum?

Would You Like Pepperoni on That?

Posted on March 21, 2013 by A French American Life

Pizza in the south of France

According to my husband, the true test of language proficiency is whether or not you can order a pizza over the phone.

We’ve all been there. Room full of friends, maybe studying together, watching a game, or just hanging out. People get hungry. Someone suggests ordering a pizza. One person shouts out, “Mushrooms!” and another, “Pepperoni!” while a third person says, “I’m a vegetarian. No meat!”

As anyone who has tried to learn a second language can attest, when more than one person speaks at a time, conversation becomes tangled and it can be impossible to comb it out and discern what’s being said.

Then there’s the phone call. It’s hard enough to understand your non-native tongue in person, let alone over the phone. Add to that the fact that the person working at the pizza place is often foreign as well. So, two people are trying to communicate with each other in their non-native language over the phone. For my husband here in southern California, that means a French guy talking to a native Spanish speaker in English. For me in France, I often found myself talking to north Africans whose native tongue was Arabic. Chances are you’re using a cell phone, too, which despite our advances in technology still can’t compete with a landline in terms of quality.

My husband describes it this way:

“The trouble starts when they ask for your phone number. In French, we always say: eighty-five, nineteen, etc. In the U.S., phone numbers are stated one digit at a time. So the person on the other end of the line ends up confused. I’m trying to understand what the pizza guy is saying while everyone in the room is shouting their likes, dislikes, what size pizza, etc. I have to ask the pizza guy to repeat everything three or four times and now he’s annoyed. People keep yelling out ingredients. The pizza guy asks if we want pepperoni. I heard someone say they were vegetarian. But pepperoni, that must be the same as the Italian word: peperoni, which is a type of pepper. That’s not meat, right? So I say, ‘Yes, pepperoni.’”

Miraculously, the pizza arrives. And it’s not the pizza that anyone wanted.

Vieux Antibes

I had a similar experience in Antibes, the south of France. My friends decided that my French was the best among us, so I should order the pizza. We knew of one place that delivered. We’d been there in person before to order and hadn’t had the most… positive experience with the guy there. So, crossing my fingers in hopes that someone other than the guy we’d dealt with would answer the call, I dialed the pizza place. Mr. Personality answered. His Arabic accent was thick and he had a short fuse. I did my best, ordered two pizzas, one “Reine” (olives, mushrooms, and prosciutto) for my friend and I to split, and a second pizza covered in meat for our other friend (she was 8 months pregnant, adorable, and ravenous).

Then we waited. And waited. He finally showed up. With one pizza. It wasn’t either of the pizzas we’d ordered. He also claimed he had no change. We argued with him. This isn’t what we ordered! Why would you come here without any change? He became irate and insistent that the mistakes were ours and not his. My pregnant friend was about to pass out from hunger, so we took the pizza and he took a hefty tip.

We never ordered pizza from his store again. Pity, they made good pizza. Thin, crispy crust, flavorful cheese, fresh toppings…. The south of France has the best pizza I’ve ever tasted, outside of Italy. Even when they get the order wrong.

Ordering food in a foreign language is an adventurous undertaking. Even something that seems as simple as pizza. The day I can confidently order a pizza over the phone in France, I’m popping open a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

Now I’m hungry.

Happy Spring! Here’s me in a lavender field in the south of France.

French Flicks You Might Actually Enjoy

Posted on March 14, 2013 by A French American Life

A list at one of my new favorite blogs, BabyBilingual.blogspot.com, got me thinking about my own experience with French films.

It’s clear that your average French film greatly differs from your average Hollywood one. The French don’t insist on happily-ever-after Hollywood endings. French films tend toward serious and dark. Or just weird – even from a French person’s perspective. I’ve developed an appreciation for the differences, but sometimes, after watching a French film, I still can’t help but throw my arms up in exasperation.

Here’s a list of things I’ve said after watching French movies with my husband:

Is marital fidelity to the Frenchman simply too blasé to be considered as a lifestyle choice?
Are French people ever nice to each other?
Do French people actually like this movie, or do they just say they do so they seem deep and intellectual?
I’ve now spent so much time gazing at my bellybutton that my neck aches.
WTF? No, seriously, WTF?
I’m going to lie here and stare at the wall. I don’t have the energy to stand or even to cry. There’s no point to life, existence; it’s all empty.

Here’s a list of movies, in no particular order, that did not make me say those things. These are films I have enjoyed and recommend:

Amélie 2001 Whimsical and loveable, with Audrey Tautou. Nominated for 5 Oscars. It’s the French movie most people have heard of, if not seen.

Le Dîner de Cons (The Dinner Game) 1998 Hilarious, albeit a bit mean-spirited. One of the funniest movies I’ve seen. Plus, it has Thierry Lhermitte. Yum.

Après Vous 2003 Charming romantic comedy in which Daniel Auteuil, as nice guy Antoine, comically finds that no good deed goes unpunished.  

La Doublure (The Valet) 2006 A valet must pretend to have an affair with a supermodel in order to keep her real affair a secret. With Daniel Auteuil and Kristen Scott Thomas.

Le Placard (The Closet) 2001 Accountant Daniel Auteuil (I must like this guy) is about to be fired when he gives the impression that he is a closeted gay man, thus saving his job. With Thierry Lhermitte and Gérard Depardieu.

Prête-moi ta main (I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single) 2006 Luis, a confirmed bachelor, has a mother and five sisters who are determined to see him get married.

Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas) 2005 About a truce called on Christmas day during World War I. Nominated for Best Foreign Film

And for a completely different tone:

Le Pere Noël est une ordure (“Santa Claus is a Bastard”) 1982 Hilarious + Thierry Lhermitte.

Paris, Je T’aime 2006 Eighteen short films set in the different arrondissements of Paris. Plenty of star power in both actors and directors. Some of the films are weird and indecipherable, some are sweet, some are hokey, some are fun. Overall, really liked it.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and The Butterfly) 2007 Based on the autobiography of the same name, Jean-Dominique Bauby suffers a massive stroke followed by locked-in syndrome. The book is stunning, well worth the read. Even though he hated his physical therapist. I would too, after reading his description of his experience.

L’Auberge Espagnole 2002 Fun story about cultures clashing, love found, love lost, with the adorable Audrey Tautou in a small role.

Les Choristes (The Chorus) 2004 Beautiful story of a teacher who makes an impact. Nominated for best foreign language film.

La Grande Vadrouille 1966 French comedy that was the most successful film in France until Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis. Great fun with two Frenchmen trying to help the crew of a shot down Royal Air Force Bomber escape German-occupied France.

Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis (Welcome to the Sticks) 2008 According to Wiki, this broke nearly every box office record in France, including the long held record for La Grande Vadrouille. Hilarious. Great for French language learners, as it pokes fun at regional accents and expressions.

Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement) 2004 Audrey Tautou searches for her fiancé, who disappeared while fighting in the trenches in WWI. Two Oscar nominations.

Hors de Prix (Priceless) 2006 Audrey Tautou (again!) plays a gold digger who mistakes a bartender for a wealthy target.

Delicatessen 1991 Okay this one freaked me out when I first saw it, but on a second viewing when I was older and more accustomed to French humor, this dark-humored, post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie had me cracking up laughing.

Le Papillon (The Butterfly) 2002 Charming story of a widowed butterfly collector and the friendship he develops with his neighbor, a lonely 8-year-old girl.

Rififi 1955 Gritty noir film. Great.

Le Corniaud (The Sucker) 1965 Hilarious gangster parody.

What have I missed? What are your recommendations? Thoughts? I’d love to hear them – always looking for things to add to our Netflix queue!

Please Forgive Me, I’m an Anglophone

Posted on February 19, 2013 by A French American Life

How is this for an ego crusher: as I was reading a poem by Verlaine in preparation for my French class, my daughter said, “Stop Mommy! You’re hurting my ears!” then clapped her hands over her ears to emphasize her point.

Ouch.

I’m telling myself that she wanted a quiet breakfast rather than my French being so abominable that even a two-year-old couldn’t take it. But still.

From my first words, usually “bonjour”, I have an accent. My husband assures me it’s a cute accent, but I’m self conscious about it. My French class is causing me to second guess everything I thought I knew about how French words are pronounced. I’ve decided that’s a good thing – I’m tearing out my bad habits and rebuilding with better fundamentals.

In France, the locals know I’m foreign, but often they don’t recognize that I’m American because my accent is less obvious. One of my most memorable experiences happened when I was studying in Paris. I traveled to Strasbourg one weekend to visit some friends and we went to a huge party where I was hit on repeatedly by French men of varying levels of charm. It was the accent that seemed to draw them to me and I started to feel pretty sexy and charming myself right up until this encounter. A French guy approached me and said something that I didn’t understand, so I said, “Pardon?” My accent immediately made it clear that I was not-from-around-here.

So he switched to English. “Where are you from?”

This was 2004, the height of America-hating, and not 10 minutes before I’d had to endure a diatribe about why Americans suck (from a guy who was simultaneously doing everything he could to get into my pants), so I wasn’t too eager to reveal my origins. Instead, I said, “Paris.”

“No, really, where are you from?”

“I’m from Paris.”

“You look Irish. Are you Irish?”

I shook my head.

“British?”

“No.”

“Scottish?”

“No.”

“Welsh?”

I laughed and shook my head.

He tried a few more English-speaking countries, then finally, exasperated, said, “Well then, where are you from?”

“I’m American.”

“An American girl?” He wrinkled his nose. “Ugh!”

And he walked away from me. Classic.

I don’t know that I’ll ever pass for a local. That ability with a language is a rare gift. I always laugh at movies and TV shows where some spy or official is pretending to be a native, talking in the native tongue, supposedly fooling everyone. It just so rarely happens; our Anglophone tendencies will always creep into our language. It’s a rare and gifted person who can speak a foreign tongue without an accent. My French teacher at SDSU is one of those people, which gives me hope. There’s a fuzzy line between improper pronunciation and simply having an accent. I’m working on it. If only so that my kids don’t make fun of me.

Former Posts about learning French in my family:

Progress in My French Education

Rue, Rit, Roue

French Customer Service

My Daughter Started Preschool

My Daughter Speaks French

A Trip to France and Ireland (from a few years back)

Posted on February 14, 2013 by A French American Life

We’re temporarily grounded. I haven’t been to France since the summer of 2011 – the longest break from my beloved adopted country in a decade. The thought of traveling overseas with a 2-year-old and a baby is so daunting that we’re exploring closer to home these days. We’re gearing up for 2014; that will likely be the year of our big return to France. For now, I’m going to reminisce about some of our past adventures. With photos.

We brought my family to France and showed them around Paris, including the Luxembourg Palace and Gardens:

And Versailles, where we also visited the lesser known Hameau de la Reine, a small village and garden built for Marie Antoinette:

We traveled through the Loire Valley; here is a photo of the rooftops of Ambroise. I love rooftops in French villages:

Next we went to Bretagne (Brittany), western France. Gorgeous flowers abound:

Here we are in Port de St. Goustan:

My husband and I then went on to Ireland. Here I am in Kinsale, one of our favorite towns…

…where we hung out in a pub with this sign. Will you buy me a drink if I tell you?

Ahhh, laptop traveling. It’s not quite the same. But it will do for now.

Progress in My French Education

Posted on February 12, 2013 by A French American Life

When I’m surrounded by French speakers, I equate the feeling to wearing a veil over my eyes. My comprehension (vision) is obscured; there is a distance between me and what is going on around me, a distance that I struggle to overcome. Initially, the veil was thick; I got hints of the big picture but I missed all the details. Gradually, that veil has become more transparent. I went from being able to only decipher a message from tone of voice and hand gestures (i.e., Wow! That guy’s really pissed about something…. Oops. It’s me. He’s pissed at me.) to picking up the gist of a conversation to where I am today: One-on-one, I understand 90 to 95% of what is said. In class, I don’t miss much. Sometimes I even feel like the veil is gone. But sit me down at a dinner table full of French people who all speak at the same time faster than a high speed TGV and I’m lost. I need the subtitles (in French is okay) turned on during a movie. Lyrics are tough. And my brother-in-law, with his mumbling and slang, is impossible.

There are so many subtleties in language – specific word choices aren’t just about vocabulary, behind them exists a history of usage and color developed through cultural evolution. Often pop culture influences our language; think, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” from Seinfeld, and how knowing what is underneath the simple meaning of those words deepens our understanding and appreciation for the expression. By the way, it took my husband years of living in the U.S. to finally understand the humor in Seinfeld. Emotion, body language, points of emphasis – it all can be culturally specific. I was treating a Romanian patient once (I’m a physical therapist) and every time I checked in with her to make sure I wasn’t hurting her: “Is that hurting?” she shook her head. After several minutes, her daughter stepped in to tell me that her mother was in a lot of pain. She (finally) explained to me that in Romania, a nod means no and a head shake means yes. I felt terrible, but how was I to have known?

Already I’ve taken some leaps forward with my French class this semester. The crazy thing is that it’s the seemingly tiny tips that help me the most. Here are a few I’ve learned:

T’s and D’s:

In English, we place the tip of our tongue on our hard palate for “t”s and “d”s. In French, they place the tip of the tongue on the back of the upper teeth. This makes a huge difference in pronunciation of the vowels following these consonants.

Syllable breaks:

In English, we break our words up by consonants, always searching for that next consonant (albeit subconsciously) when pronouncing a word. In French, syllable breaks occur at the vowels more often. Example:

gé né ra li té (French)

gen er al i ty (English)

So all these years I’ve been chewing on my consonants instead of opening up and letting those vowels sing!

Accentuation: English has a complicated and nonsensical way of accenting certain syllables in certain words, and it plays a phonetic role. Imagine how complicated this is for the poor foreigners out there trying to learn our language! Look at the word defect, and notice how the meaning changes depending on which syllable we accent. In French, the accent is always on the last syllable, it’s really more a prolongation of the vowel than a true accent, and it doesn’t change the meaning of the word. Thank you, French, for finally making something less complicated!

Seriously loving this class I’m taking.

Former Posts about learning French in my family:

Rue, Rit, Roue

French Customer Service

My Daughter Started Preschool

My Daughter Speaks French