“la parole exportée”

I’m getting ready to interpret at an important meeting tomorrow afternoon. I was hired only yesterday, so I spent most of today reading; it’s a blessing that in addition to my general knowledge of the subjects likely to be covered, there is an abundance of resources (the press, videos, all sorts of materials).

What’s really strange is this: the more I prepare, the less I feel prepared… And it’s always been like that, it’s part of my character, I suppose. I’d like to be able to say that the older I get, the easier it gets. But no, no hope of that ever happening

Does anyone have that feeling, in their own line of business?

My attention is attracted to e-mails that have started coming from YouTube, about what must be ‘Subscription Updates’ in English. But the translated heading is: ‘Mise à jour de l’abonnement’, which has a totally different meaning in French.

So when the first e-mail from YouTube arrived, I opened it with this kind of feeling: ‘What’s going on NOW…’

The people at YouTube (or rather some machine) just wanted to let me know about recent changes in the channels I’ve subscribed to. (Notice that my multiple subscriptions are not reflected in the so-called translation, reinforcing the misunderstanding.) When you subscribe to something, you have to accept terms and conditions, and when your subscription is updated (in the French meaning), it usually means that these terms and conditions have changed (not to your advantage, most of the time…).

It’s not just me. The word UPDATE in this specific sense does not translate easily in French. A client of mine has decided against translating it at all for a particular program they have. Maybe YouTube should follow them.

But of course, given enough doses of it, I’ll get used to this strange use of my native language and won’t notice anymore. Maybe.

This is the slogan selected by a French furniture store to adorn the T-shirts worn by their store sales staff this Summer.