Japan: "Engrish" and Francophilia

I had been warned, before going to Japan, about Japanese people's fondness for T-shirts printed with random and bizarre English phrases. (I had also been warned not to buy any T-shirts with Japanese writing on them, as it was a good chance that they actually said "I am a stupid American.") And yep, it's for real. I can't remember all the examples that I saw, but I think the funniest one had to be a young woman in a shirt that said "Skinny Boys, Baggy Girls."

Then there are the signs that employ mangled or poorly translated English. Though sometimes this mixture of Japanese grammar and English vocabulary can give the language an odd vitality. (The same way that the mixture of Hindi and English gives vitality to the novels of Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy.) I was quite taken with a sign on an auto-repair shop that said "Assist Your Carlife." Maybe no native English speaker would ever say this, but we understand what it means, and it's jaunty and concise.

This sign is just hilarious on multiple levels (I'm juvenile, so sue me):

And I also giggled when I saw the name of this café:


But, to get a little more serious and indulge in some Sociology 101, this Patisserie Tooth Tooth sign points at some key features of Japanese culture. First, it's very cutesy (kawaii). Second, I wasn't expecting this, but the Japanese are extremely Francophilic.

There are tons of pseudo-French cafes and patisseries in Japan--I even discovered the "Kobe School of Patisserie" while on a walk! I became a big fan of a chain called "Vie de France," which I loved because they had an English-language menu and served lemonade (which I needed on those humid Japan afternoons). Their pastries were an odd mix of French and Japanese flavors: brioche dough with mango filling, or pâte feuilletée with red bean paste. I also drank a lot of iced café au lait (said aisu kohi o le) while in Japan. I'm convinced that Japanese coffee is weaker than American or European--it never once gave me caffeine jitters, which I otherwise tend to get frequently.

Furthermore, if a boutique clothing store doesn't have an English name, it will have a French name. (Or maybe an Italian name... but hardly ever a Japanese name.) The French names, as you might guess, are no more likely to be grammatical or logical than the English ones are. I nearly cringed when I saw that one of Kobe's most elegant department stores had an extremely mangled and misspelled French poem painted on the wall of the accessories department.

I said that this Francophilia surprised me, but I guess it makes sense, in terms of the Japanese love for all things cute. Because the Japanese idea of France seems to be similar to the idea of France that I had when I was a little girl watching too many Audrey Hepburn movies: Paris, romance, beauty, refinement, femininity, frills, pastries, pastel colors, etc. In this context, it makes perfect sense that Sofia Coppola filmed Marie Antoinette after making Lost in Translation--because the look and feel of Coppola's Marie Antoinette accords fully with the Japanese idea of what France is all about. I wonder if the movie was a bigger hit in Japan than it was here?

Oh, and also: I know it's a tired joke to make fun of the trouble that Japanese people have distinguishing between "r" and '"l" sounds, and to say that they are speak "Engrish." But I got confirmation of this when I went to the school where my friend Lexi teaches and sat in on a class where they played a game. Lexi divided up her first-year English students into teams and had one child from each team run up to the chalkboard and write the name of their favorite subject in school. Three kids wrote "Engrish." And none of them wrote "English."

It's Pronounced Like "Omelette"

Tonight and tomorrow night, the Lycée Français in San Francisco is hosting a young French actor, Thomas Marceul, performing a one-man French-language adaptation of Hamlet. I recently became friends with a woman who teaches at the Lycée and, knowing that I love theater, she invited me to see the show with her.

I was very excited, because I've always wondered how Shakespeare sounds when translated into French. (When I met my French host parents and told them I was a drama major, they immediately started chattering about a production of Hamlet that they had just seen. I was very confused at first, because in French "Hamlet" sounds like "Omelette" and I didn't know why they were getting so worked up over glorified scrambled eggs.) When French people translate Shakespeare, do they use archaic or obscure French words to approximate the difficulty that Shakespeare's language holds for English speakers? Do they make any attempt to reproduce iambic pentameter? Will the richness of the language still come through? Will Shakespeare still be, you know, Shakespeare?

My French friend says that English is difficult for her not because of pronunciation or grammar, but because of the sheer size of the vocabulary. English words tend to have lots of synonyms, or almost-synonyms, and for a non-native speaker it is difficult to grasp all of the nuances. French is a much more compact language by comparison. Racine's total vocabulary in his eleven tragedies amounts to only about 3262 words, and his play Phedre uses only 1642 distinct words (source). Meanwhile, at a conservative estimate, Shakespeare's vocabulary contained around 17,700 words (source). Thus, almost by default, a French version of Shakespeare must be less rich than the original.

Yet Shakespeare can be terrifically compact when he needs to, using puns and plays on words that are difficult to reproduce in a foreign language. Think of Othello's "Put out the light, and then put out the light." I once saw a French translation of this line that went ""Eteignons cette lumière, pour ensuite éteindre celle de sa vie." Though both the English and the French lines are 10 words long, the French has more syllables and sounds wordier. Furthermore, it over-explains the metaphor that Shakespeare is using, robbing the line of its poetry. In French, Othello literally says "Let's extinguish this light, so as then to extinguish the light of her life"; in English that's subtextual.

The Hamlet adaptation tonight began with a translation of the "To be or not to be" speech ("Être ou ne pas être"), and I listened to it with a double conscience, hearing the French words but constantly comparing them to my memory of the English original. I quickly learned that tonight's translation did not use old-fashioned French words when Shakespeare uses old-fashioned English ones. It was elegant, but in a clean 20th-century French way rather than an ornate 17th-century English way. For instance, the translation of Hamlet's "'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished" was "C'est un dénouement qu'on voudrait avec ardeur"--"It's an ending that one would want ardently." French people don't talk like this in their day-to-day life; but it's still closer to the way they talk than Shakespeare is to the way that modern Americans and Britons talk.

The basic principle of this translation seemed to be to keep Shakespeare's most striking images and formulations, but pare down the language that surrounded them. The line "...to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!" became "de courir si vite aux draps incestueux"--"to run so quickly to incestuous sheets." The translator realized that the phrase "incestuous sheets" is fresh and specific and memorable--but because this sense of the verb "to post" has become archaic in English, it's fine to simplify things by using the common French verb "courir," etc.

There were some instances of punning meanings getting lost or becoming too literal, as in the Othello example: it's impossible to translate, "A little more than kin, and less than kind," so Hamlet said "A little more than a nephew, and less than a son." But just a few lines later, the French gave a new poetry to Claudius's speech about "You must know, your father lost a father." In French, "lost father" is "père perdu," which has a nice ring to it.

You'll notice that my examples are taken from the first part of the show--that's because I eventually settled down and just started enjoying the French as opposed to trying constantly to compare it to the English. I will say, though, that seeing Shakespeare spoken in a more updated and vigorous idiom made it easier for me to appreciate the structure of his work, and his skill as a play-wright as opposed to his skill as a dramatic poet. Not that I am advocating that Shakespeare productions in English start simplifying his language and saying "to run so quickly" instead of "to post with such dexterity," but I was certainly not offended by it in French.

This post is getting long and I still haven't discussed other aspects of the performance--its acting, directing, adaptation--I hope to blog about that later...

Photo: Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet--she's probably the most famous French person ever to have taken on the role.

To infinity and beyond

With Infinite Jest in the news these days, I was thinking about how its title comes from a Shakespeare quote:

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio--a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times.

Then I remembered that back in April I blogged about two other memorable uses of the word "infinite" by Shakespeare:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee
The more I have, for both are infinite. (Juliet, R&J)

and

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. (Enobarbus, A&C)

So this prompted me to search all of Shakespeare's plays for the word "infinite": it seems he used it on 42 occasions. Not all of these lines are important or memorable, but my search did remind me that "infinite" appears in two additional all-time great Shakespeare quotes, both spoken by the title character of Hamlet:

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!

and

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

So that's 5 memorable uses of the word "infinite" out of 42 total times--a very good batting average, I would say.

And then I thought that perhaps this is one reason we revere Shakespeare's writing: he grappled with the infinite. I very seldom use the word "infinite" in my own writing, for fear that it would come across as exaggeration or insincerity. If I ever, say, was tempted to describe a character as having "infinite variety," the skeptical voice in my head would immediately retort "Yeah right, that's impossible" and I'd have to find a different, less all-embracing adjective.

But Shakespeare writes boldly, without mincing words. He holds Polonius, that prince of word-mincers, in utter contempt; and even though Hamlet is a very confused young man, his confusion is a Painful Clash of Big Ideas rather than a low-level muddleheadedness. To Hamlet, man is both "infinite in faculty" and "the quintessence of dust": strong words, but memorable ones.

The Language of Sophistication

Élan. Panache. Soigné. Chic. Debonair.

Have you ever noticed how the English language, lacking the proper words for these kinds of concepts, had to import them wholesale from French--a language oversupplied with words to refer to all the nuances of beauty, style, and fashion?

And this has been going on since the Norman invasion. Nuance, beauty, style, and fashion all derive from French roots as well. As do suave, poise, charm, urbane, elegant, sophisticated, culture. Not to mention the unmentionables (lingerie).

It is said that 1/3 to 2/3 of English words ultimately derive from French, but for words that discuss refined aesthetic qualities, the percentage seems even higher. The only Anglo-Saxon or Germanic-derived words I could find in this category are pretty and lovely.

And the Germans have the same problem that we English speakers-do. Over the years, they've imported die Eleganz, die Mode, die Kultur, schick (chic), der Charme, and der Elan.

Image: The very chic, soigné, and elegant "Zémire" ensemble by Christian Dior, 1954. Image from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The City Play

The City Play. That's what I would title my next work of drama, if I wanted to make sure it got noticed by American theaters: it combines two fads in play titles that have caught my attention lately, and started to annoy me.

First, the trend of plays whose titles end in "city." I just saw Adam Bock's The Drunken City at Playwrights Horizons, which got me thinking about this. In addition to Bock's play, Shining City by Conor McPherson, Dead City by Sheila Callaghan, and Dying City by Christopher Shinn have all recently been seen in New York. Oh, and a play called Liberty City just opened as well. It's getting pretty hard to tell them all apart! Perhaps this trend dates back to the TV shows Sex and the City and Tales of the City--and I'll admit that, as a wee lass, I always confused those titles as well.

The other, more irritating trend, is to label plays with the word "Play" in the title. Edward Albee (The Play about the Baby), Suzan-Lori Parks (The America Play), and Jordan Harrison (The Museum Play) have all done this, but the major culprit is Sarah Ruhl. I'll give her a pass for Passion Play because, after all, its subject is the history of passion plays, the impact of theater on life, etc. But otherwise, putting "Play" in the title just seems cutesy or tricksy. Couldn't Melancholy Play have been called something like The Melancholics, for instance? Would we still be talking about Death of a Salesman if it had been called The Salesman Play? Unless a play is explicitly about the act of making theater, what is the point of sticking "Play" in the title?

Worst of all, these titles sound like working titles, not names for completed works of art. I mean, here on my blog, or when talking to my friends, I'll refer to "my play that takes place in 1934," but I sure as hell am not actually going to title it that; its name is The Rose of Youth. Ruhl's latest, which will premiere at Berkeley Rep next season, is officially titled The Vibrator Play. This sounds like what you put at the top of your first draft when you have a vague idea of writing a play about the history of the vibrator but not a sense of the finished work. But by the time you're done, you should have progressed beyond this--finding a title that makes a resonant thematic statement, instead of merely acting as a label.

What's strange about this is that Sarah Ruhl was originally a poet, and aside from her titles, her plays are filled with lyrical images and metaphors. Why, then, does she title her plays so prosaically?

La bizarrerie de la jeune fille Francophile

I've decided it's my new goal in life to read only books that make me want to yell "Score!" when I find them in a bookstore, and the most recent book to make me do that was a sale copy of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon, at the airport Powell's. I'm about two-thirds of the way through it, but I've already decided that the beginning of chapter 9 is my new favorite quote. Since I'm a French major, it absolutely tickles me:

I admit I have an ugly fondness for generalizations, so perhaps I may be forgiven when I declare that there is always something weird about a girl who majors in French. She has entered into her course of study, first of all, knowing full well that it can only lead to her becoming a French teacher, a very grim affair, the least of whose evils is poor pay, and the prospect of which should have been sufficient to send her straight into business or public relations. She has been betrayed into the study of French, heedless of the terrible consequences, by her enchantment with this language, which has ruined more young American women than any other foreign tongue.

Second, if her studies were confined simply to grammar and vocabulary, then perhaps the French major would develop no differently from those who study Spanish or German, but the unlucky girl who pursues her studies past the second year comes inevitably and headlong into contact with French Literature, potentially one of the most destructive forces known to mankind; and she begins to relish such previously unglamorous elements of her vocabulary as langueur and funeste, and, speaking English, inverts her adjectives, to let one know that she sometimes even thinks in French. The writers she comes to appreciate--Breton, Baudelaire, Sartre, de Sade, Cocteau--have an alienating effect, especially on her attitude toward love, and her manner of expressing her emotions becomes difficult and theatrical; while those French writers whose influence might be healthy, such as Stendhal or Flaubert, she dislikes and takes to reading in translation, where their effect on her thought and speech is negligible; or she willfully misreads Madame Bovary and La Chartreuse, making dark romances of them. I gathered that Phlox, in particular, considered herself "linked by destiny" (liée par le destin) both to Nadja and to O. That is how a female French major thinks.

Hilarious. I love the image of the French language "ruining" American girls, as if the book had been written in the 1800s and not in 1988. And while nothing irritates me more than women who see Emma Bovary as a romantic heroine instead of a deluded fool, there's always Flaubert's Salammbô if you want sex, violence, luxury, and a naked chick with a snake coiled around her. I love No Exit, Baudelaire, Verlaine...and am proud to share a birthday with Jean Cocteau. I delight in saying dark and mysterious-sounding words like cartouche d'encre--so much more evocative than the English "ink cartridge." Bravo Mr. Chabon for this dissection of the female French major! We're not as common in universities as we used to be, but we certainly are a breed apart.

Put your overeducation to good use!

Isn't this a great way to save the hungry/learn new stuff/procrastinate?

FreeRice.com donates rice to the United Nations if you play a vocabulary quiz game and get the right answers!

I'm not quite sure what the connection is between feeding the hungry and learning difficult vocabulary (other than they are both good things), but this is just the kind of charity appeal that gets someone like me excited.

There are 50 vocabulary levels (get a word wrong? go down a level) and I am consistently dancing on the border between levels 46 and 47. They say it is rare to get above level 48, but I'm determined--and from such determination, hungry people are fed!

Evidently there are about 30,000 grains per pound of rice, and if you play this game for 10 minutes you can maybe earn 1000 grains--so the more participants, the better.

Another tune for a dancing bear

At About Last Night blogger Carrie Frye just posted about translations of a famous quote from Madame Bovary. My first encounter with it was Geoffrey Wall's translation for Penguin Classics, where it reads:

...and human speech is a cracked kettle upon which we beat out tunes for dancing bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars.

…
…
(let it sink in)
…
…

What do you think? This is one of my favorite lines in any novel, ever. I still remember where I was when I first read it--in a Vassar auditorium waiting for a film screening to start--and I just had to put the book down and say Wow. Rarely does a single sentence hit me that hard.

I've since realized that this is perhaps Flaubert's most famed and admired quotation--it gets cited by everyone from Carrie Frye to Michael Dirda to The New Yorker to...well, just google "flaubert bears dance OR dancing" and you get 110,000 results. But I came across it without any foreknowledge--the best way--and I knew that I was reading something of genius. In a way, I'm annoyed to discover that it's so well-known--I'd planned to make it my personal favorite quote, something between me and ol' Gustave! And now I learn it's nearly as famous as, say, "Parting is such sweet sorrow" (139,000 Google hits for "parting sweet sorrow shakespeare")?

What's interesting is that it retains its genius in just about every translation. But for the record, here's Flaubert's original French:

La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des melodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles.

I wonder, though, how Flaubert would react to all the various translations of his work--he, famed for constantly seeking le mot juste. (If he wrote a page in a week, he considered that a good week.) I'm taking a translation seminar right now, and we really could have a field day with this one phrase--so short, but full of traps. For instance, English does not have a simple equivalent for the important verb "attendrir"--it literally means "to make tender," but "we wish to make the stars tender" sounds stupid, which accounts for the variety of translations like "move to pity," "conjure pity from," "melt," etc.

Truly, this is a perfect sentence. While apologizing for the inadequacy of human language, it, in its original version or any reasonable translation, proves that language nevertheless can have power...can be memorable and move beyond cliché...can be used to connect with our fellow human beings...can conjure pity from the stars, or at least from the heart of anyone who reads it.

Pet Peeves

A few things that irk me:

• Movies that show somebody reading a book, but don't allow you to see the book's title. But the kind of books people read tell you so much about their personalities--they're a valuable tool for characterization! Besides, I'm always looking for recommendations, especially when I think the character might have similar tastes as me.

• Movies that feature a newborn baby, but don't reveal what the parents named the baby (recent offender: Knocked Up). I'm a bit obsessed with naming things--maybe it's part of being a writer--and always want to know what names other people choose. If you're like this too, you'll enjoy the Baby Name Wizard Blog, which discusses name trends throughout the decades.

• People who use the word "unbelievable" to mean "unbelievably or astoundingly good." As in, "Meryl Streep gave an unbelievable performance in Sophie's Choice!" No, she gave a completely believable performance, which is what makes it so praiseworthy. I suppose the word "incredible" is almost as bad, considering its etymology, but at least it seems to have been used in this context for longer than "unbelievable" has. But you know what? There are plenty of synonyms for "unbelievable" and "incredible," so from now on, I promise to try to avoid those words in my writing. Let's try these on for size: amazing, astonishing, sensational... See? Easy.

"Coincidence? I think not!"

In my flight-versus-invisibility post below, I was about to write a paragraph about the original concept coming from This American Life, and the invisible Violet of The Incredibles being voiced by This American Life contributor Sarah Vowell, and finish it up with a big ol' "Coincidence? I think not!" But that would be very annoying--especially because I don't know where the phrase comes from. Is it a movie or TV show? Or just a hipster way of being ironic? IMDB's quote search is no help. But if you know the origins of "Coincidence? I think not!", please post in the comments!