UPDATED: The language of Molière meets the language of Shakespeare

WARNING : CONTAINS LANGUAGE SOME MAY FIND OFFENSIVE

(Post has been UPDATED below - original post first.... )

Covering the Bloc Quebecois for English-speaking Canada has presented some challenging and rewarding experiences.

First and foremost is finding a way each day to make what's happening on the ground here accessible and interesting to everyone, whether they are living in Saskatoon, Kitchener or Yellowknife.

There are 75 seats in Quebec - there's now a four-way race in many ridings, the Bloc's hegemony over the province is being loosened - a political sea-change that has immediate repercussions for the shape of Canada's next Parliament and, I will argue (at a future date...) a profound impact on the future of the sovereignty debate.

But today let's look at one of the lighter challenges faced each day by any journalist covering the Bloc for English-language media: translation.

There's a difference between knowing what a word means and choosing the proper English equivalent that transfers all the context and imagery.

(Creating images is a key part of radio-story telling)

In an interview with Le Devoir newspaper, Gilles Duceppe vowed to keep on fighting, saying he had no intention of "manger une volée."

Translated literally, it means "to eat a bullet." But that invokes suggestions of suicide - which isn't what he meant.

Instead, I had to settle for he had "no intention of taking a beating." Not perfect, but gets the point across.

Other translations can be more serious.

Last week as Jack Layton began rising in the polls, Gilles Duceppe conceded that Layton "est un gars sympathique."

You have to be careful here - because in English to say some one is "sympathetic" can mean something similar to "pitiable" - which would mean Duceppe was invoking Layton's recent surgery and battle with cancer into the campaign.

But in French "sympathique" means "a good guy," "nice," or "good-mannered."

On the other side of the coin, long-time sovereignty activist Gérald Larose is reported to have described Layton on Wednesday as "un crapule."

The proper translation is a "scoundrel" or someone who is "immoral" - but, again, the imagery of the root of the word is lost in translation.

Larose also presented English-language journalists with another tricky word - calling Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper "des crosseurs professionals."

(Larose has since apologized for the remarks)

This is where things get sticky.

The verb "crosser" is Quebecois slang for "to masturbate." It's a term one does not use in respectable company.

To translate that as "professional wankers" doesn't really capture the vulgarity of it.

The British would say "professional tossers," but that's a term that doesn't mean anything to most Canadians.

The closest equivalent is "professional jerk-off."

While we're making use of the graphic language warning stated above - former BQ MP Suzanne Tremblay was quoted in Tuesday's La Presse as declaring "Gilles (Duceppe) est constipé dans cette campagne!".

Again, the literal translation is what you might think it is: "Gilles is constipated in this campaign!"

But it's an expression used in French to mean someone is "rigid" or "stuck up."

While those terms accurately convey what Tremblay was trying to say, they don't invoke the image that is part of the story.

The last one I will leave you with is an expression being bandied about a lot these days to describe the Bloc: "Ils tentent de sauver les meubles."

That translates literally to: "The are trying to save the furniture."

But something is lost with that.

The French expression invokes the image of someone throwing their furniture out the windows of a burning house. It's not pretty, not a preferred option, but better than standing by and watching it burn. ....

 
UPDATE: Thank you everyone for your input into the intricacies of language.

The many and varied suggestions for translations of the above mentioned words and expressions really demonstrates the point: often times different words mean different things to different people - which is what makes translation so challenging.

One point I did want to acknowledge is that the verb "to masturbate" in French-slang (joual) would properly be "se crosser."

It's what's called pronominal verb, which, especially in French, requires a reflexive pronoun.

Without it, as in the case of the agent noun "des crosseurs", the word distances itself from the subject of the phrase.

In this case, it is understood it's something one does to other people, if you will.

There really is no direct English translation.

The definition would be: a vulgar term referring to someone who screws-over other people.