Glossary entry (derived from question below)
French term or phrase:
Des journées ensoleillées entrecoupées de quelques pluies bénéfiques
English translation:
sunny days, interspersed with occasional welcome rain
French term
Des journées ensoleillées entrecoupées de quelques pluies bénéfiques
| 4 +3 | sunny days, interspersed with occasional welcome rain |
Tony M
|
| 4 | bright, sunny days, punctuated by a few beneficial showers |
Barbara Cochran, MFA
|
Dec 12, 2016 14:42: Yana Dovgopol changed "Term Context" from "Pour le pessimiste, il n’y a dans l’année que des jours nuageux et pluvieux, à peine éclairés, il accepte de le reconnaître, par quelques rayons de soleil. Pour l’optimiste, au contraire, il n’y a que des journées ensoleillées entrecoupées de quelques pluies bénéfiques. On présente un projet au pessimiste ? Il voit immédiatement une montagne d’obstacles qui vont s’opposer à sa réalisation. L’optimiste, au contraire, accepte tout nouveau projet" to "Pour le pessimiste, il n’y a dans l’année que des jours nuageux et pluvieux, à peine éclairés, il accepte de le reconnaître, par quelques rayons de soleil. Pour l’optimiste, au contraire, il n’y a que des journées ensoleillées entrecoupées de quelques pluies bénéfiques. On présente un projet au pessimiste ? Il voit immédiatement une montagne d’obstacles qui vont s’opposer à sa réalisation. L’optimiste, au contraire, accepte tout nouveau projet " , "From Test" from "Not Checked" to "Checked"
Dec 13, 2016 12:48: Yana Dovgopol changed "Term Context" from "Pour le pessimiste, il n’y a dans l’année que des jours nuageux et pluvieux, à peine éclairés, il accepte de le reconnaître, par quelques rayons de soleil. Pour l’optimiste, au contraire, il n’y a que des journées ensoleillées entrecoupées de quelques pluies bénéfiques. On présente un projet au pessimiste ? Il voit immédiatement une montagne d’obstacles qui vont s’opposer à sa réalisation. L’optimiste, au contraire, accepte tout nouveau projet" to "Pour le pessimiste, il n’y a dans l’année que des jours nuageux et pluvieux, à peine éclairés, il accepte de le reconnaître, par quelques rayons de soleil. Pour l’optimiste, au contraire, il n’y a que des journées ensoleillées entrecoupées de quelques pluies bénéfiques. On présente un projet au pessimiste ? Il voit immédiatement une montagne d’obstacles qui vont s’opposer à sa réalisation. L’optimiste, au contraire, accepte tout nouveau projet " , "From Test" from "Not Checked" to "Checked"
PRO (1): Victoria Britten
When entering new questions, KudoZ askers are given an opportunity* to classify the difficulty of their questions as 'easy' or 'pro'. If you feel a question marked 'easy' should actually be marked 'pro', and if you have earned more than 20 KudoZ points, you can click the "Vote PRO" button to recommend that change.
How to tell the difference between "easy" and "pro" questions:
An easy question is one that any bilingual person would be able to answer correctly. (Or in the case of monolingual questions, an easy question is one that any native speaker of the language would be able to answer correctly.)
A pro question is anything else... in other words, any question that requires knowledge or skills that are specialized (even slightly).
Another way to think of the difficulty levels is this: an easy question is one that deals with everyday conversation. A pro question is anything else.
When deciding between easy and pro, err on the side of pro. Most questions will be pro.
* Note: non-member askers are not given the option of entering 'pro' questions; the only way for their questions to be classified as 'pro' is for a ProZ.com member or members to re-classify it.
Proposed translations
sunny days, interspersed with occasional welcome rain
| Thank you Tony. |
| agree |
Charles Davis
: So do I; "welcome" is very suitable for "bénéfiques": an optimistic way of looking at it (which is all this is). And "interspersed" is a good choice too, I think.
1 hr
|
|
Thanks a lot, Charles! Yes, that was exactly the way I was looking at it, trying to put myself in the place of an optimist (not easy, Eeyore that I am ;-) )
|
|
| agree |
Victoria Britten
13 hrs
|
|
Thanks, Victoria!
|
|
| agree |
Yvonne Gallagher
: //BTW did you realise all these are a test piece for a job???http://www.proz.com/translation-jobs/1251793
15 hrs
|
|
Thanks, G!
|
United States
Laudable Lady Linguist
Native in: English 
Works in: Spanish to English, French to English, English to Spanish, and 3 more.
bright, sunny days, punctuated by a few beneficial showers
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 47 mins (2016-12-10 19:31:31 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------
I'm glad you appreciate my literary style, Chakib.
| I really like "puncutated" as it seems very natural and lietrary. Thank you. |
| neutral |
Jennifer White
: refreshing showers
1 hr
|
|
Actually, "beneficial" is much, much more appropriate because the writer is talking about psychological mindsets, in this case the one that is deemed to be most beneficial for good mental health. "Refreshing" is more appropriate in a weather context.
|
Discussion
I would like to advise that I have abandoned the job because of the fact I have not felt confident enough to deliver a flawless translation of the "test text" and due to the fact that agency is pretty suspicious as they may have assigned different extracts to multiple translators to get the job done for free.Please accept my apologies for this unethical attitude despite very good faith and intent.
I agreed with "welcome" in Tony's answer and have just repeated that it works well. The point of my note was simply to suggest an alternative. "Welcome" mainly implies that occasional rain is agreeable and makes you feel good, whereas "bénéfique" means that although it may not be pleasant while it's happening, it's a good thing. An optimist recognises this; good comes out of even life's less welcome episodes. That's why I suggested "salutary", which means exactly that. But I don't insist on it.
The whole thing is a metaphor about the weather, with pessimists seeing the negative and optimists seeing the positive side of things.
"welcome" works well for "bénéfique"
Bénéfique does mean beneficial, of course, but I find that word awkward and unnatural in English here. It seems to me that rain is being used metaphorically. To the pessimist, it's always raining; life is unrelieved gloom. To the optimist, life is mostly sunny, and even when it rains (when life is not so cheerful), it's a good thing. As Longfellow put it, "into each life some rain must fall". It's pleasant, provided it doesn't go on too long, because it relieves the monotony, and beneficial, because some adversity strengthens you and makes you appreciate the sunshine more when it returns (for example). So "welcome", which potentially combines these two ideas, seems to me a viable option. I wonder whether "salutary" might be a possibility: "salutary spells/periods of rain", or something like that.
'benign' is I think unwise, inasmuich as it tends to anthropomorphise the meteorological phenomenon in a way that is alien to the discussions here.
And do note that the FR uses 'pluies' and not any one of several words for 'showers' — my interpretation of the FR source text is that it is rferring to sunny days interspersed with rainy days (note the specific choice of verb: 'entrecoupé'); using 'showers' tends to suggest that they were 'sunny days with occasional showers', which is not at all the way I read it; and although it's perhaps a tiny point, the 'whole-day-at-a-time' perspective is perhaps a better illustration of the optimist/pessimist contrast.