16:32 Jan 26 

The original is slightly colloquial in attributing the faculty of "vouloir" to the coach. We would say coach for 'autocar' in the UK rather than 'bus', I have just ralised. The French original is not shocking in the least. A similar use of English would not be shocking either.

The only point worth raising is the choice of word to convey "vouloir". As the question as posted specifically raises the point of "vouloir à tout prix", then this is strong. That will or determination has to be conveyed. "Wish" is not strong enough in my view. The coach is not expressing a "désir".

14:19 Jan 26 

It's always tricky when one is obliged to reproduce in translation something that one knows is incorrect in the original. To me, the biggest problem arises when such imperfection might pass unnoticed in the SL, but sticks out like a sore thumb in the TL. Luckily, I don't think that's the case here — though equally, the translator does have a duty to not make it any worse, by drawing undue attention to it, or by changing the tone or register in such a way as to make it risible, or worse.

10:23 Jan 26 

is just the sort of thing you hear every day in colloquial English, and probably just as much as in French (although I won't debate that!) to the extent that I don't feel this is a cultural difference that needs to be taken into account by the translator. Of course, strictly speaking it's plainly not "correct" use of either language (this is a statement of the rather obvious!), but I maintain that it's not the translator's job to transform the words out of other people's mouths. After all, who speaks "syntactically correctly" all the time, especially in the heat of the moment? Maybe we should all try harder, but that doesn't mean that the translator should do this on behalf of the ST. Our job is not only to convey the meaning as best we can (including all connotations), but also the tone and register of the ST, both of which would be lost in "correcting". In this instance, the words say a lot about the actual speaker/writer, and we don't know that this isn't included intentionally. So, changing them in the interests of producing a more polished TT could actually be doing the text quite an injustice. Of course, this would be a different story were this to be an academic paper!

10:07 Jan 26 

I was wondering it one might try to get round the flawed source text in a couple of ways:

a) the coach seemingly was intent on / determined to

b) it seemed as if the driver of the coach was...

The first amounts to a slight 'smoothing' of the s/t, where the second is clearly over-translation, which would be dangerous if this text were being used to highlight the writer's non-objective view of this issue, but otherwise might be acceptable...

I must admit, I do quite like the image of 'Carlos the Charabanc' ;-)

10:02 Jan 26 

Note to mods: I am not 'peer commenting' on Vitaly's answer, I am simply picking up on some of the terms he has himself raised in this discussion, and I feel that discussing these issues is highly relevant to solving this particular translation problem.

You ask why isn't 'wishing' suitable? Well, the way I see it, there are 2 fundamental reasons:
1) unlike the other terms you cite, 'to wish' is very much something associated solely with humans; it is much further down the emotional scale than the other words.

2) Nowadays, in modern usage, 'to wish' almost always connotes some kind of longing: "I wish I could go to Rome"

Such usages as "Do you wish to sit down?" are now completely archaic (other than in the most pompous of protocol situations) — in that sense, modern EN almost invariably uses 'to want', other than possibly in some set expressions.

Here, the sense of the FR 'vouloir' is probably better interpreted along the lines of 'to seek' — which although similarly dated in EN, is nonetheless used in certain specific types of context.

Once again, dictionaries don't tell the whole story, as with your use of 'purport', which is totally out of register here.

09:54 Jan 26 

We are all agreed that the source text is poor; having quite properly started off referring to the 'bus' impersonally (as is appropriate in this sort of formal, objective context), the writer then immediately spoils it by, firstly, personifying it, and secondly, making a subjective judgement about what the coach or its driver might have been thinking / intending. So the text is suboptimal from the outset. But as others have also said, we as translators do not have the right or duty to try and correct that.

So any translation involving the same personification is going to have the same flaws — and Writeway has perceptively pointed out that, while this may be tolerable in FR (debatable!), it is most certainly less so in EN; but we have to work with it...

You ask why some words seem to be tolerated, and others not — well, I'm afraid this is just a matter of native-speaker feeling, it's almost impossible to explain in any objective way, and there are certainly no convenient 'rules' to explain it!

09:45 Jan 26 

If you look at the other postings, you'll see that the other suggestions also came in for the same "witty" criticism ;) You aren't the only one to have been singled out!

09:36 Jan 26 

If "wishing" is irrelevant to a bus, despite such phenomenon as personification, how could "determined" and "intent" be relevant thereto since these are words describing mental activity too?