Lost in translation.

   One of the joys and one of the problems of living in France is the different language. I have heard recent ex-pats bewailing the language `problem` but I prefer to look at it as an advantage. When we first started to come to France on holidays, it always seemed more `foreign` more exotic than staying safely in anglophone G B. Now we live here full-time, I still feel a certain thrill in being able to chat to French people, without difficulty unless their accent is really bizarre or they speak really too quickly. Sure, there are hitches that can occur, such as a visit to the Tax Office or the dentist, where specialised vocabulary can be needed but you can often swot up in advance. In a larger sense, this is what we did before moving here, taking several years of evening classes to prepare our French. Now I take a pride in finding the best translation of a French sentence, we even are shared translators for our local village magazine, when the Maire expressed an interest in having his monthly column translated to reach the ten per cent of his citoyens who are English. True, you can nowadays have an instantaneous translation by computer, but this is not without its pitfalls.
  I was reminded of this some time ago, when reading a Tom Clancey novel translated from the American (that`s what it said in the aknowledgments) into French. I was doing this as a practice, having read it in English some time previously. A sentence brought me up short in my tracks. The French read `Le Général entra en hate, portant une chemise en carton`  Which I mentally translated, quite correctly, as `The General strode in, wearing a cardboard shirt.` Had his laundry overdone the starch, I wondered, or was this some French figure of speech with which I was unfamiliar... On reflection, I worked out that the French verb `porter` could mean to wear OR to carry and chemise can mean file or folder as well as cardboard. I bet Google would have given me the first version, however!
   I recently read yet another advantage of being bi-lingual. The effort and extra neurones needed by the brain to do this, provide a certain protection against developing Alzheimer`s Disease. Speakers of two languages, who are prone to the syndrome, develop it on average several years later than their monoglot  contemporaries. Perhaps I should rush off and study another language, I could live lucid for ever!

  Bye for now, going to see if I can find my old German dictionary!