{OT} Bevvy Session Over..

... .to celebrate the end of the exams. I'm not optimistic. Yesterday's
translation was a passage from some Ian McEwan novel or something .. lots
of mechanical terms, so the bike helped me. 'camshaft', though (it's
'arbre à cames') ? I knew it, but I thought that the camshaft was _in_ the
engine, whereas this word was used for the final drive thingy of a lorry
that was flipping over. So I just put 'transmission'.

Results due out 2 June, and I'll know then if I'm going to sit the oral
parts, in Toulouse in July. Christ, they don't half make us jump through
loops...

 

They didn't mean le cardan, by any chance?

 

Good one; I hadn't thought of that (even though my last two bikes have been
shafties).

It's actually 'arbre à cames', as the first thing that we did when we got
out, was to call my SO, and ask her to check in the dictionary (as no one
else knew it either, except for one girl who used to be a journalist, and
once did an article on cars, so she remembered it). As far as I was
concerned, 'camshaft' is the thing inside the engine on which valves are
mounted, and whose turning helps the latter to open and close at each cycle
of the 'four-stroke' process. As in 'DOHC', for example, when I lusted
after a Capri 2.8i ...

Unfortunately, I committed one _monstrous_ error, in the conjugation of a
verb: the third person singular of the imperfect subjunctive of 'pouvoir'
('to be able to'). It's 'qu'il pût' of course, but I hesitated, hmm'd and
haw'd, and eventually put 'qu'il pusse', which is a ****-up of Biblical
proportions. It's nothing to do with 'not being French', as when we got
out, I asked some others who had done the same translation, and they had to
look it up too. 'pouvoir' is an group 33 verb, thus irregular, and when I
was learning French, I pored over books for hours on end and thus now have
a not altogether undeserved reputation as someone who 'masters' the
subjunctive mood. Which makes my _faux pas_ all the more heinous, and you
can be sure that I kicked myself sufficiently, and will continue to do so.

The imperfect subjunctive is hardly ever used now, but if you use it and
**** up, it's four points taken off right away. French exams are marked
out of 20, and for the teacher exams we have to study three 'literature'
texts and we don't know until sitting down to take the exam, on which work
the question will be based (this year's texts were _Richard II_, _The_
_Confessions of an English Opium Eater_ by William Morris, and a collection
of short stories by Flannery O'Connor), plus a 'civilisation' question
which was _News from Nowhere_ by William Morris, but we're sure that that
work _will_ figure in the exams. So Tuesday we had a commentary in English
on a passage from _News from Nowhere_, Wednesday was a dissertation in
French on 'prophecy and imposture' on the short stories of Flannery
O'Connor (when we were told by the invigilators to turn over our papers,
the exam hall resounded with exclamations of dismay and, 'putain!'), and
then yesterday a translation into French from English, and a translation
from English into French. Each is marked out of twenty, and then the final
mark out of sixty is divided by three to bring it back down to out of
twenty again. In theory you can get 20/20, but no one ever does, so the
practical top marks are 18/20, so if you consider that I lost four points
right away with my fucked-up verb, that brings me down to 14/20, which
doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre when it comes to the inevitable
missed accents, errors of inattention etc. On the other hand, I made some
lovely figures of speech that even the 'real French' didn't manage, such as
'.. produisant un large évantail d'étincelles qui sembla propulser
l'arrière du camion dans l'air ..' ('producing a wide spray of sparks
which seemed to propel the rear of the lorry into the air') SO heard that
one (she didn't sit the same exams, having passed them last year) and
nodded appreciatively.

As it's a 'concours', you don't need to get over 10/20 to 'pass', because
the 'average' is taken. Last year, 7.5/20 was the 'threshold' above which
the candidates passed to the oral exams in Toulouse. I got 6.8/20, which
means I stayed at home. So this year, if a lot of people fucked up (for
example in the Ian McWotsit translation, the text 'he was applying first
pressure to the brake', was taken by the quasi-totality of my fellow
candidates (all French, therefore not native English speakers) to mean, 'he
was applying the brake with all his strength', rather than, 'he was just
_starting_ [my emphasis] to appy the brake'. Being bilingual has its
advantages ...), then the average might be lower, or by the same token,
if I did better than others, I'll get through. There were more vacancies
this year, and fewer candidates (the desks around me were filled with 'did
not attend' stickers). My English or French isn't in doubt, but I was sure
that the literature question would be on _Richard II_, so I had worked that
one like a slave; helped by my loving Shakespeare. Still, at least I can
now quote _Richard II_ till the cows come home .. :-\

Last night a dozen of us went for a bevvy, and we found ourselves in St
Michel and one of the bints said, 'my cousin's coming to meet us', and we
then got to meet her very tasty 19-year-old English cousin. As the only
'non-single' bloke in the group, I wasn't looking to get my leg over, but
the other two were. Imagine their dismay when 'Charlotte' said to me,
'you've got a really strong Scotch accent' ... before sodding off. Har,
har, I chuckled !

Anyway, now you know more about our system. I think I'm going to get
pissed again this evening. 'qu'il pusse' ... <fx: shakes head> .. what a
fucking knob. :-(

 

_Christ_ ... :-(

Make that 'by Thomas de Quincey' ...

 

I don't know what it is in English. Or I might, if I at least knew
what "imperfect subjunctive" meant.

 

I posted a thingy on that a long while ago .. lemme see if I can find
it...

Nah, I X-No-Archived it. Arse. It was here ...

url:http://www.google.fr/groups?q=g:thl757137204d&dq=&hl=fr&lr=&selm=lrf
b4ugdnqrdvb1hr3u7i5u7pu4ti51edn%404ax.com

The English subjunctive is hardly ever used now, but the most common
example I think would be 'be', as in, 'I would prefer that he _be_
informed'. The 'be' is the subjunctive here.

The French subjunctive is widely used, and it has two main 'tenses',
present and imperfect. The latter is considered 'high French', but in
speech would be considered a bit 'pretentious', so isn't used. Rest
assured that i don't go around saying, 'qu'il pût' ... In written texts,
it's different.

The irony is that I could have got around the subjunctive by changing
the structure of the phrase ... ****, those four points are going to
hurt. :-(

 

Well, obviously.

C'est la vie...

 

genuine_froggie wrote

It is proper rather than chav English but it is still used.

 

No, because it's not based on what others _write_, but on the mark that
they _get_. Even if every other candidate made the same mistake, they
won't take that mistranslation as being 'correct'. It just means that
everyone will lose four points on that. The other candidates didn't
**** up on the 'qu'il pût', but they all 'talked around it', so I was
the only one who (to my knowledge, as I didn't interview the other 3,999
candidates) fucked up there.

I'm just mulling over my possible marks here ... Tuesday, I reckon I got
11/20 for the English composition. Wednesday, hmm ... I read O'Connor
twice only which isn't enough (I read _Richard II_ five times and _News_
_from Nowhere_ seven times), so I'm looking at 7/20 or maybe 8/20.
Yesterday, I did a rather nice couple of translations, my little _faux_
_pas_ notwithstanding, so I can hope for 11/20. That makes 11+8+11, or
30/60, so 10/20. If the threshhold is 7.5/20 as it was last year (and
it'll be lower as there are more vacancies), I reckon that I'm in with a
a chance.

 

Well yeah, that's what I _thought_ it was, and _stricto sensu_, I wasn't
wrong, was I ? Except that I didn't know that vehicles had _several_
camshafts ... :-(

{ snip included text }

You bad man ... Bullshit Bear will be killfiling you at this rate ...
;-)

 

Thank you.

 

Hope you get the result you deserve.

Best of luck.

--
Dan L (Oldbloke)
My bike 1996 Kawasaki ZR1100 Zephyr
M'boy's bike 2003 Honda NSR125R
Spare Bike 1990 Suzuki TS50X
BOTAFOT #140 (KotL 2005), DIAABTCOD #26, BOMB#18 (slow)

 

snip


Have you considered submitting all that to Private Eye's Pseud's
Corner?

--
ColonelTupperware,
spouting bollocks on Usenet since 1997
Usenet FAQ at
http://www.its.caltech.edu/its/services/internetapps/news/news2.shtml
UPCE FAQ at http://upce.org.uk/ UKRM FAQ at http://www.ukrm.net/faq/

 

What's that ?

 

So a post that has my saying, 'but I hesitated, hmm'd and haw'd, and
eventually put 'qu'il pusse', which is a ****-up of Biblical proportions',
and which ends with, 'what a fucking knob. :-(' is 'pseudo-intellectual' ?

Remarkable. If Tupperware didn't understand it, he only had to say.

 

In the post in question, I was sort of 'musing aloud'.

I've read it. I just didn't know the 'coin' bit.

 

the cont known as Bear says...

Because of him I'm almost ashamed to call myself Irish.

 

Michael Flatley, Daniel O' Donell... Eamonn Holmes!

Oh, and Darsy.

 

the cont known as JackH says...

He's a treasure.

At least he knows he's a ****.

 

Come now... no need to exaggerate.