Women in Stitches: laughing with the Tapestry makers

#tapisseriedebayeux

What is the man at the bottom doing?

Women in Stitches = Les femmes en points (lit.) = Les femmes rirant aux larmes (idiom.) 

Une émission sur BBC Radio 4 (une chaîne similaire à France Culture) sur les femmes anglo-saxonnes qui ont très probablement réalisé la Tapisserie de Bayeux. Il n'y avait tout simplement pas d'autres couturières qualifiées à l'époque pour entreprendre un projet aussi énorme. 

Des auteurs, des femmes bien sûr, tentent d'imaginer ce que les femmes racontaient en cousant les scènes héroïques de la conquête normande de l'Angleterre. Imaginez et essayez de découvrir la moquerie cachée des hommes virils sur les tapisserie? 

Elles pensent que les moustaches tombantes des chevaliers normands ont été intentionnellement exagérées. Et! elles ont compté 91 pénis dans la tapisserie - essayez de vérifier, la prochaine fois que vous la voyez ! 

Très amusant à écouter, mais solidement basé sur la science (hehe)

(quote from the programme site)

The Bayeux Tapestry is coming to Britain in the near future. It’s among the world’s most famous works of art, but it's also a mystery: no one knows who made it. (...)

The main panels were probably designed by an Important Man (hence the focus on battles, on big sexy horses – surely the BMWs of their day – and political propaganda). But the margins of the tapestry may have been left to the imagination of the stitchers themselves: probably English women. This 'freehand' marginalia tell a different story, sometimes undercutting the message of the Norman conquerors in surprising ways. We can imagine the camaraderie and humour of the women sewing it, talking, about their personal tragedies, the terror they survived, the soldiers who were husbands and sons.

Link to the programme

Babylon French-English.

I've tried many French-English automatic translation websites. Here I want to recommend one that has reliably helped me translate notes, emails and short passages from newspapers:

Translation.babylon.com has two windows to translate to and from French and English.

So, for example, if you are writing an email in French but are not sure if you got everything right, or have no time to look it up or check with a French speaker, just write it in English, copy-paste into the Babylon window and click translate. Copy-paste the French version.

Do the same for translating back from French.

It's okay for informal correspondence or quick reference, but when you write a serious formal letter in French, make sure it's checked and corrected by a knowledgable French speaker. 

Amazon Declaration.

The Normandy Review of Books by Alexander Anichkin is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk. 

I am publishing this in compliance with the new rules that are coming into force today, 1 April 2013.

When you click on Amazon links on this blog, The Normandy Review of Books earns a small commission. 

A Good Year: the Client Is Never Right.

Some time ago I wrote here about the bad treatment that French clients get from after-sales services.

I was watching A Good Year (wiki), the romantic comedy with Russel Crowe (Max Skinner) and Marion Cotillard (Fanny Chenal), and literally jumped up when Fanny, who runs a busy restaurant, tells Max, who is trying to help her as a waiter:

— Remember, in France the client is never right!

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Here's a 'diaporama' of the film with the catchy French version of Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Tout-Petit Bikini by Richard Anthony:

A Ban on Homework?

KidsinFrance web-site has an item on the appeal by French teachers and parents to ban all homework for two weeks:

Teachers and parents groups are calling for a fortnight's homework ban - starting today - to raise the issue of whether homework helps pupils or, on the contrary, is counterproductive. The FCPE, one of the main parents' associations, and the Icem (Icem-Pedagogie Freinet) are inviting parents and teachers to post their comments on the website 'Ce soir pas de devoirs' (no homework tonight).

Well, with children's schoolday longer than the legally permitted workday for adults, why not extend it for the whole year? Comments on kidsinfrance seem to support the idea.

Image: wikimedia

OK1 (French Netspeak)

Marianne Semeuse.

Franglais is about borrowing Anglo-American words and phrases into French. 

But the French are as inventive with their own version of netspeak as English-speakers. Not least because phonetically read English alpha-numeric contractions, like gr8, mean nothing to a French-speaker. What's 'grhuit'?

Instead, the French are introducing new contractions in internet French and SMS conversations.

Here are a few examples:

-  A+ or @+: means “À plus“, like “later”, or “l8r”.
- ASV: “Âge, Sexe, Ville”, the equivalent of the English “ASL”, or “Age/Sex/Location”.
- b1sur: “Bien sûr“: Of course. The “1″, “un“, makes up for the syllable “-ien.”
- ENTK: “En tout cas”, means ”in any case”.
- OK1: “Aucun“, “none” or ”no one”.
- STP or SVP: “S’il te plait”, “please”.
- TNKT: Means “T’inquiètes“, or “t’inquiètes pas”, meaning “don’t worry” or “no worries”.
- X: Since the word for cross in French ”Croix” is the same for the verb croire (to believe), for the second, you can use just an X, as in “Crois-moi“ or “X moi“, (believe me!)

- via Patricia Mansfield-Devine, SecondCherry - the over-40s babe. Thanks, Trish.

Le client est roi, mais... le roi est mort.

This excerpt is from the eight lessons about the French by Elain Sciolino, the former New York Times correspondent in Paris.

Execution of Louis XVI.

Anyone who has lived in France can testify that after sales service and, generally, customer relations is a horror area of French life. Often worse than people-state relationship in the country.

3: The Customer Is Always Wrong
 
It is hard for French merchants to admit they are wrong, and seemingly impossible for them to apologize. Instead, the trick is to somehow get the offended party to feel the mistake was his or her own. I’m convinced the practice was learned in the strict French educational system, in which teachers are allowed to tell pupils they are “zeros” in front of the entire class.
A doctor I know told me he once bought a coat at a small men’s boutique only to discover that it had a rip in the fabric. When he tried to return it, the shopkeeper gave him the address of a tailor who could repair it — for a large fee. They argued, and the doctor reminded the shopkeeper of the French saying, “The customer is king.”
“Sir,” the shopkeeper replied, “We no longer have a king in France.”