Just watched French coverage of Kerry speech. Interesting what gets lost

[Feanorcurufinwe]

in translation. For instance "I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. " was translated as "I will be a commander in chief who will never take us to war for the wrong reasons" which is nowhere near as hard hitting.

[yardwork]

1. The French were probably pleased to hear it anyway!

At this point, I think Europe will take what they can get. They are ABB all the way!

I loved Kerry's speech, and the other speeches during the convention. I feel so much better and more optimistic!

[liberalpragmatist]

2. where? which channel?

And what was the tone or tenor of the coverage? I assume favorable.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

4. TV5 - you can get it with DishTV

The tenor? Neutral. I really like their news coverage for world events -- it is not slanted, (although, like any country, it's "A plane crashees, but no French people were aboard, so it's ok")

But they have a lot of international stories that they don't show on US tv, a lot more middle east coverage, there is also a half hour show every day on news from africa that I've found interesting.

[Warpy]

3. English is a low context language

and French is a higher context language. There may be ten English words, each with a different shade of meaning, that are synonymous to one French word. The shade of meaning in French and other higher conext languages is conveyed by the situation, the speaker, and the voice itself. Literal translations from English to French and back again will always miss this.

A good translator will be able to convey meaning precisely, even when the literal retranslation seems to sound rather flat.

[Name removed]

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[Feanorcurufinwe]

6. Well it is true the French phrase he used

could include the case of someone misleading, so I guess I see your point. But I don't see how the translator doing the voiceover of Kerry's speech is able to convey all the context you're talking about. I just listened to it a bunch more times (thank you DVR) and, it just sounds weak in translation, to me, maybe it is just because I am still weak in the contextual understanding you are talking about. I thought they did fine with the other parts of the speech they used, though.