Thursday, May 17, 2012

occupational hazard

Speaking of schoolboys:
These people terrify me, but I am one of them. If they stab me in the back, then at least that is the judgment of my peers.

When translating Camus, obsess Freud-like with Meursault's maman

Translating the first line of Camus' "L'Etranger" makes for an interesting article in this week's New Yorker. The various variants run generally close to "Mom died today" and the magazine's focus on the familiarity and untranslatability of the French "maman" distracts from the other, to Me more-important, aspect of the French choice of auxiliary verbs.