Paris Journal 2007

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One of the last things Carolyn and Doug did in Paris was to
explore the Eiffel tower area.

 

Jeff de Bruges chocolate shop owned by Karima’s family,
on the rue Poncelet in the 17th arrondissement.

 

Embarrassing graffiti in English in Paris, in the Parc André
Citroën.

Tuesday, August 14

 

This morning’s errands brought another little surprise, brought on by how much different words sound alike in French (as they do in English, too). 

 

I had to go down to the park to buy newspapers since our regular papeterie is closed for vacation.  After passing the Maison Kayser bakery which is undergoing major renovation, causing a bit of debris to be scattered on the sidewalk, I was approached by a hefty young man who seemed to be telling me that I dropped my mouse back there.  He was pointing to the scattered debris on the sidewalk.  I told him I didn’t understand; that I really speak English (I suspected he was trying to sell something).  Whereupon he broke into English and said “madame, I think you lost your smile back there.”  I broke out laughing – somewhat loudly, like a Zontian at Happy Hour.  He said “and now thanks to me you have it back.”  I said “thank you,” still laughing, and “goodbye.”

 

He was passing out copies of what he called a magazine, but it was really advertising for skin care products.

 

The word “souris” (mouse) sounds a lot like “sourire” (smile) because you don’t pronounce the “s” on the end of “souris.”  And both of these nouns are masculine, so the gender doesn’t help you distinguish between them.

 

Carolyn and Doug have made it safely home.  On Sunday evening, I used the phone in our apartment to order their taxi for early yesterday morning.  The slick phone system for pre-ordering taxis wants to send the taxi to the address you're calling from, so I had to work around that, and I finally got a real person on the phone!  Anyway, it worked.  The taxi showed up right on time despite the very early hour and the fact that there is a taxi shortage in Paris.  Somewhere they had read that taxis cost 40 percent more at night, and night is considered to extend right up to 7AM.  Since their taxi was at 6:30, they were afraid they’d have to pay much more than they did on the way into the city.  However, they actually paid a few euros less.  Whew.

 

This trip was the first time they’d been to Europe.  They say that it was a “memorable trip to a special city.”  They had a very good time, I believe.

 

So Wendy is here now, and Tom and I showed her around her neighborhood in the 6th yesterday evening, ending with a nice dinner at La Petite Chaise.  Tom and I had superb lamb chops, and Wendy really enjoyed her “cuisse de canard” (duck leg) in orange sauce.  We had some fun with the history of the restaurant that is printed in the back of the menu.  The French version has some text that nobody bothered to try to translate and include in the English version.  So I read through the French version for Wendy, attempting to translate as I went along.  Tom and Wendy said I did it quite well, but there were a couple spots that were so difficult to translate, I can see why the restaurant’s translater didn’t want to bother.  A couple of other pieces missing from the English version were a bit racy, or could have been offensive if translated the wrong way.  So the translater skipped those, too.

 

What this exercise revealed to me is that now when I read French, I can read and understand a sentence perfectly well in French, but I can have difficulty putting it into English words.  I’m now reading and comprehending in French, rather than translating it in my head as I go along!  When I start dreaming in French instead of English, I know I will have achieved the next level . . . .

 

Here are a couple of phrases or vignettes from the French version of the restaurant’s history that were either omitted entirely, or they were cleaned up, for the English version:

 

“At the beginning of the 20th Century, artists and actors went to La Petite Chaise as it was the favored place for their late dinners.  Eve Lavalliere and some semi-famous people who were getting away from Montmartre and other places inspired the pencil of Toulouse Lautrec at the restaurant.  The tenor Alvarez, the celebrated baritone Noté, dined often on the first floor [second floor, in American English] in the presence of women with great cleavage.  Sometimes, they had romantic encounters after the meal.  Gawkers, gathered under the windows, would regale themselves with impromptu récitals.”

 

Let me say that the English version of that paragraph was shorter and somewhat cleansed.

 

Here’s another one:

 

“Closer to our time, the famous spur-of-the-moment dinners of The Crapouillot and the thunderous Jean Galtier Boissière, enlivened La Petite Chaise from time to time with their celebrated and turbulent companions.  In the course of one of these parties, ordinarily exclusively for men, our grand Colette was admitted into the company of these ‘initiates’ only because she was a writer, and not because she was a woman.”

 

I’m sure the translator was afraid to touch that one, for fear his/her words would offend women.  But hey, I agree that there were probably very, very few women that those men would have allowed in their gatherings.

 

Last year, we had dined only on the ground level of this restaurant.  We really wanted to see the upstairs dining room.  This year, both times that we’ve dined there, we’ve been seated upstairs.  It is a very attractive, very French room.  And now I know a bit more about what has gone on in that room!

 

I see in today’s International Herald Tribune that there is a new term for people like Tom and me, our friends Ellis and Dick, Steve and Kathleen, John and Susan, and others.  We are “location-neutrals.”  We can live anywhere we want and still do our jobs.  In these days of high-speed internet, our lives in the places of our choices are made possible.  So here we are in Paris.

 

Tom is working away on a difficult chapter.  One of my many jobs is to make the computers work in an acceptable manner.  For some reason, Tom has lost his work on a couple occasions.  I think it is a software glitch.  But after restarting the computer, I was able to go into the files, find the right temp file, re-name it, and force Microsoft Word to open it again.  Both times so far, this has worked.  Knock on wood.

 

Last night, when we got home about midnight after walking all the way back from the restaurant, I sent a fax for Wendy to one of her clients.  I use a fantastic service called RingCentral.  This allows us to have an 800 number, and to receive our faxes and voicemail messages in my e-mail, no matter where we are on the planet (as long as we have internet access).  It also means that I can send a fax from here to the U.S. without paying for an international phone call.  And it means that people back home don’t have to call us internationally, they just call our local number in FL and we receive the messages.

 

There are many people who work from home who ought to use a service like this instead of using their home number for their business.  The use of a home number for a business or profession can have very unprofessional results, as we have noticed now on a number of occasions.  And you just can’t beat the convenience and accessibility provided by a service like RingCentral.  An essential for us, the “location-neutrals.”

 

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