Man, it's about time! That is so cool! I hope they can do all the back issues too!

Magnificent news!

Oh dear. I wouldn't want to be the ones translating their verbose reviews into English!

Good point. So far, their English versions have a definite (defiant?) international sound about them, along the lines of Flash Art and such... but who's to complain when it's free (so far)?

Great scoop, David, thank you!! No where I can buy some extra reading time? Cheap?

I just read the translation of the introduction and they are giving their translators a lot of freedom. Just check out the last sentence: "Bonne lecture à tous" is translated as "We hope you find it valuable"??? I think I'll stick to the French!!!

On a somewhat related note: Why is everyone so into the flip-the-pages presentation online (Screen International, Variety, Blickpunkt: Film)? Is there something practical about this for readers that I am missing here or do publishers simply like it because they save money on a lay-out person for their website?

I don't know, but if I had to guess, I'd say that the demo must be immediately appealing to magazine editors.

Plus, whoever's behind that demo is probably arguing: When portable readers replace paper, here's how you'll be able to retain your identity and avoid forking over for a new design.

Boyd, I'm glad you're not translating those "verbose reviews" as long as you believe in such foolish literalism. You'd prefer "Good reading to everyone"? Good grief!

Well, Dave, I won't presume to speak for Boyd (after all, though we've both done quite a lot of translating in our day, he speaks six languages, and I only speak two), but I'm guessing he's made two separate points here in two separate comments.

1: Translating some of these essays is going to be quite a challenge. That I agree with.

2. "We hope you find it valuable" is too loose a translation of "Bonne lecture à tous." That I disagree with.

But though I do disagree with that second point, I don't really see it as a criticism of the language of the original texts. He might feel that way, of course, but that's not what I read into it.

I want one of those lil' fish you squeeze into your ear that translate everything!

"I want one of those lil' fish you squeeze into your ear that translate everything!"

I think "Babel" would have been better had Douglas Adams written it (posthumously).

-cp

"I think "Babel" would have been better had Douglas Adams written it (posthumously)."

Brilliant!

Yeah the flip book looks fancy, no doubt, but I wonder if it's really practical and not quite the spirit of the internet. They seem to want to keep the identity of the paper, too afraid to mingle with the electronic versatile media...
And it's probably meant to avoid being copy/pasted all over the place.

Another bit of funny translation is INLAND EMPIRE's tagline, translated in French by Delorme and then re-translated in English differently... "A woman in trouble" becomes "The story of a woman who has some problems" ;)

"The story of a woman who has some problems"

Fantastic. Thanks for spotting that.

Thanks David I can't add much to that. I must admit I really enjoy the Cahiers and I find their contribution to film criticism very important indeed, even today.

The fact remains that their work is so much part of the French (one might even dare to say Parisian) tradition of criticism that I am afraid that rather a lot will be lost in translation (and here I am not talking about the thousands of French films they will be referencing that will mean little or nothing to people outside of France because they never made it beyond the borders).

Their articles are finely tuned not only in terms of content and straightforward analysis but also in terms of register: they nimbly jump between high-brow intellectual French, primary school French and slang, and if the translation of Bonne lecture à tous is anything to go by, these changes of register will be mostly lost in translation, thus robbing the pieces of much of their literary pleasures.

I can hear the masses of film fanatics who do not speak any French cry out "better to have a translation that communicates something of the piece rather than no translation at all" and I fully appreciate this... that is why I said... I wouldn't want to be the one translating their articles. (In no way did I mean verbose to mean they use too many words... I meant to imply they use many words, which they do, but they are as carefully chosen as anything and their concern is not only to choose the right word to convey their ideas, but also to write a piece that is a good read off and by itself. This is exactly why it will be so hard to find the exact English equivalents...)