One of my more enjoyable hobbies is reading histories of the 20th Century, so that I can have a better understanding of the context of modern conflicts and issues. I recently finished reading a series of books on modern Irish history and the origins of the Troubles, and I have turned my eye to France, with the plan of reading of the Vichy period, then moving on to France and Vietnam, then France and Algeria.
So, I bought Vichy France by Robert Paxton, a well-respected historian. It’s a good, informative read, but it is driving me up the wall at the same time. The book is in English, and the writer is a professor at Columbia University, but too damn often, Prof. Paxton tosses in a French word or phrase - without providing a translation.
Professor Chucklehead, did it ever occur to you that there may be some people interested in French history that don’t know French? If you want to fancy up your prose with a pithy French phrase every once in a while, fine, I can usually grasp what you are saying by the context. But when you quote a conseiller-maitre, tell me what the fuck that is! Is he important? What does he do? Where did he stand in the Vichy hierarchy?
You’re driving me nuts, Professor. I’d like to end your book understanding what you were writing about, and you ain’t making it easy.
I’m not an expert on modern history, but I do know Bob Paxton. His book is intended for a more scholarly audience that would surely be acquainted with certain terms. A quick search on google for conseiller-maitre turns up only the modern office, likely not the same entity as the Vichy one.
Do you have any reference books that might shed some light on this?
Absolute agreement with the OP. I’m reading one in which the author tosses off untranslated phrases in both French and Latin. Some I can eventually figure out because of similarities to English, but others go straight over my head, preventing the author from making the damned point he wanted to make, unless it was to point out how provincial and uneducated I am.
My favorite purposeful misuse or foreign quotes was a Mark Twain book (although I forget which one and none of the Gutenburg files has it) in which the chapter headings were in obscure languages, preferably dead and with non-Roman alphabets. Like Sanskrit.
By the looks of what [n]Maeglin** has to say about how Paxton’s books are “intended for a more scholarly audience” (are we being patronizing enough, Maeglin?), have you considered starting out with Vichy France for Dummies?
Don’t start with me, dropzone. Tell me every bit of jargon in the technical works you read for your job is neatly explained and defined for the layman. Really.
[sup]The preceding was in no way intended as a disparagement of the law, lawyers, law-makers, law-abiding citizens, law-breakers, lawmen, or lawns.[/sup]
I’d like to also include Edgar Allen Poe in this topic; many’s the time I’ve been infuriated by one of his short stories where he drops in a paragraph or two of French, and whatever importance and relevance it gives to the plot is completely lost on me. Bastard.
Sua, in the interest of enlightening those of us too stupid to buy this guy’s books, toss out a few phrases you don’t know. Maybe the TMs can help you:) John, same for you. I know Maeglin knows French, and I’d be willing to bet other dopers could help him out.
It is—NOT! And I have issues with that, too. I’m tired of searching the net for the definition of some stupid acronym because an author didn’t see fit to define it the first time he used it and I happened to miss the issue of the trade journal in which it was explained. I am not asking for an encyclopedic background but toss us a bone! Glossaries are a lost art and jargon is misused when it prevents a reasonably intelligent layman from understanding a work.
But while Paxton may have thought he was writing for the trade and didn’t have to define all of his terms, his book has somehow “escaped” and reached a more general audience. I actually like the for Dummies books. Too often books are written that require such deep familiarity with the subject that I wonder why anybody in the target audience would bother reading them. A Vichy for Dummies would have sidebars explaining terms and the Vichy political structure and a reader could skip them if he wanted.
Res ipsa loquitur literally means “the thing speaks for itself.” In law it’s used for certain liability claims when what happened is so self-evident that the only issue is who’s responsible. (IIRC - current law students help me out here - the original case had to do with a barrel of flour falling on some poor sod’s head. That it wasn’t the sod’s fault spoke for itself, so the only question was “who dropped the barrel?”) Of course, it also applies to books on tape…
I would consider the book a typical Required Reading Material for an upper-level history class. I have a degree in history that concentrated on the 20th Century history of developing nations, with emphasis on their relations to the U.S. So that’s what makes Paxton’s approach so frustrating.
I managed to get a good grasp of the Arab-Israeli conflict, taking around four courses on the subject, without knowing a lick of Hebrew or Arabic, as well as a few courses on late Tsarist/early Soviet Russia and a ridiculous amount of Latin American history without knowing any Russian and barely avoiding an F in first year Spanish (the extent of my journey into Spanish). In all those courses, important foreign language terms came with a translation for language ingrates such as myself. (Ironically, I know German passably, but never found German history to be my cup of tea).
If Paxton used his book in his upperclassmen courses, I’m sure he was peppered with interruptions from his students - “Professor, what does this phrase mean?”
Fair enough, to both dropzone and Sua. I am certainly not trying to argue that he should have left these terms untranslated. I recently wrote an article in which I honestly forgot to translate a few little things, and the editor sent it right back to me to correct.
Besides a rank or three, what else is Paxton leaving untranslated? I can only assume you looked these things up in the index to see if you missed a definition somewhere accidentally…
If you wish to have some ordinary French interpreted for you, I’ll be happy to do it. (For longer works, I usually charge $Cdn0.15/word.)
Anyway, I know what you mean. I once had to read Cartesian Linguistics by Noam Chomsky. Now he’s a lovely thinker, but jeez, he dropped German, Old French, and Gods know what else in there without interpretation, as if we were all supposed to be familiar with all of them.
You know I had the same issues when I was taking my history classes. I would be reading along at some fascinating point about, say 12th century nuns and their role as wives of God, and there would be a paragraph in Latin. Now I know Latin, but even still I don’t think in Latin. It would have been far more useful for me if the author had provided an English translation, and then placed the original text in a footnote or appendix.
There are only two reasons for an author to do this. The first is the author is showing off. In college we referred to this as ‘author mental masturbation.’ The author is so happy he knows something he just has to throw it in. Kind of like name dropping at a party. It helps the author feel superior. When I read material it was generally very obvious when an author was pulling something like this. I haven’t read anything by Paxton so I can’t comment on if this is what he is doing.
The second reason is the author has poor writing/communication skills. There is no reason to assume in a general publication that the reader knows French or what a conseiller-maitre is, even if the audience is ‘more scholarly.’ I can think of a half a dozen high level history audiences who would be reading a history on Vichy France. SuaSponte has mentioned one. Certainly it might be important for a student of Germany, or a student of North Africa. For either French is probably not the most relevant language for source material. But the relationship with France during WWII might be important enough to require at least familiarity with the material Paxton is covering. It is the author’s responsibility to make the material intelligible.
As far as technical writing goes, many technical publications are horrible. It is in fact recognized as an industry wide problem. Engineers in particular get very little writing instruction. My personal preference is to follow the methodology used in Psychology magazines. The first time you use jargon or an acronym you provide an explanation or official name. This is followed in EVERY article so even if an entire issue was about ADD the first time ADD was used in every article it would show like this: ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder]. That way you know your audience understands.
HOW DARE YOU BE REASONABLE WHEN I’M IN A CRAPPY MOOD? First I sorta come to the defence of that guy in the Israel Pit thread and the thread gets closed. Then I use the “skank” word to describe biker babes and am all set with more insults and bdgr gets reasonable. And then there is this out of YOU?
Maybe I can pick a fight with the Christians in the lunch room.
Perhaps this is just me, but I don’t usually care whether writers give their own translations or not. I am also a medievalist, and I am virtually never satisfied with the translations given by most scholars. While translations can be nice, if you are reading a book in your field then they really are a crutch. Read the Latin, at least so you aren’t taking the writer’s word for it.
Crapola. Why do you assume that such writers are in any way “showing off”? This is irrelevant to people already in the field who can read the languages, and utterly useless and alienating to those who can’t. There is no purpose for this sort of behavior, nor does it reap any real emotional benefit. The assumption that an author is “masturbating” is usually made by wolly-headed literary critics and confused undergraduates.
What, then, is a general publication?
Why would I want to argue with you? Yer a good sort, and when I asked you not to start with me, you didn’t. I’d rather save my vitriol for people who actually piss me off.
Yeah, well it’s fuckin’ CONTAGIOUS! I mean, I just spent the past hour groveling in apology to bdgr and not getting involved in a crackpot gun control thread.
I’m going to listen to some Nick Cave while I work. that should get some of my aggressions out.
Ooooh, Nick Cave. I can imagine anything from Murder Ballads would provide a bit of vicarious stress relief.
As for the OP, can I add that James Joyce guy to the list? Talk about tossing in foreign words! Hell, some of the languages he uses are just made up!
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with including a glossary for unfamiliar terms, even in a scholarly work. Especially for terms that are only used in passing, and really can’t be figured out from the context. That way, experts in the field, who know the rank structure of the Vichy military by heart, don’t have to be bogged down by explanations of such minutia.
