Awhile back, Ryan Bloom wrote an article in “The New Yorker” about what the first line in Camus’s The Stranger should be. I found it interesting and plausible (albeit long-winded).
As my “Philosophy and Literature” class has been discussing “meaning” (and reading The Stranger), I thought back to Bloom’s article and decided to do my own take on it. If you’re into language or the difficulties in close reading in a translation, you might be interested.
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The first line of L’Etranger
<<Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.>>
Common translation: Mother died today.
Google Today, Mom died.
Literal: “Today, Mama died.” OR “Today, Mama is dead.”
One step more formal: Today, Mother died.
Matthew Ward and DLR: Today, Maman died.
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« Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J’ai reçu un télégramme de l’asile : « Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués. » Cela ne veut rien dire. C’était peut-être hier. »
Google: “Today, Mom is dead. Or maybe yesterday, I do not know. I received a telegram from the asylum: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Distinguished feelings. ‘” It does not mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. ”
DLR: “Today, Mama died. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Burial tomorrow. Deepest condolences.’ It doesn’t matter. Maybe it was yesterday. “
Matthew Ward: “Maman died today. Or yesterday, maybe. I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.”
Some notes from the class presentation:
Not just word placement or familiar expression:
French used to have a passé simple tense that was roughly the preterit, but it fell out of use years ago. Now, they have only the passé composé , equivalent in form to our past perfect.
Hence, the phrase Maman est morte is “literally” translated as “Mama has died today.” And there is no simple way to express in French “Mama died today.” Yet, in English, “Mama died today” and “Mama has died today” are not equivalent in meaning.
And, as if that weren’t enough, French still preserves a distinction lost in English many hundred years ago: some common intransitive verbs that give rise to a state of being are still conjugated in French with a form of “to be” rather than “to have.” (An analogous form in English is still retained in certain old hymns such as “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” and in the second line of “Joy to the World”—“the Lord is come.”)
So, Maman est morte could also mean “Mama is dead.” That meaning, with a past participle turned into an adjective denoting a state of being is quite different in meaning from either of the past tenses in English. Yet, in French, the three possible translations are indistinguishable from one another without further words added to the sentence. Context is not sufficient to distinguish them unequivocably.
(I then pointed out we weren’t going to get into that level of analysis of L’Etranger, but nonetheless there’s a limit to close reading in another language even for one who is bilingual.)