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French to English: Des crabes et des hommes / Of Crabs and Men. Rire haïtien/Haitian Laughter: Les lodyans de Georges Anglade. Educa Vision, 2006 General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - French Faut vous dire que Quina est une bande côtière qui ourle en demi-cercle une baie adossée aux Mornes Maracoif. Ce croissant de lune au pied marin est un pays de crabes surplombé de gradins couverts de haricots rouges. Et pourtant, jamais de mémoire de Quinois, n’a-t-on vu servir dans un même repas des crabes et des haricots rouges. Cela ne se fait tout simplement pas. Un impair. Une agression même, car la combinaison est réputée fatale. Sans pour autant vous entraîner dans toutes ces histoires d’imprudents qui payèrent de leur vie leur audace culinaire, répertoire favori des cuisinières de Quina capables de remonter jusqu’à quatre générations de victimes, j’ai moi-même vu dans mon enfance mourir Ti-Djo, un voisin, «mangé par un crabe» comme ils disent ici.
Translation - English You see, Quina is a strip of coastland along a half-circle of bay bounded by the Maracoif hills. This crescent moon bathed in the sea is a land of crabs, above which rise terraces covered in red beans. And yet no Quinois in history has ever seen crabs and red beans served at the same meal. It is just not done. A blunder. Even an assault, for it is said that the combination is fatal. I won't bother you with all the stories of careless people who paid for their culinary daring with their lives, the favorite repertoire of Quina's cooks, who can trace victims as far back as four generations. I myself, as a child, witnessed the death of Ti-Djo, a neighbor, "eaten by a crab," as the saying goes.
French to English: Hamlet’s Discourse to His Mother Queen Geruth (excerpt), From Belleforest's "Histoires tragiques." For the Hamlet Variorum Project's "Hamlet Works" Website (http://www.leoyan.com/global-language.com/ENFOLDED/) General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - French Ah Royne Geruthe ! c’est à faire aux chiennes à se mesler avec plusieurs, & souhaiter le mariage & accouplement de divers masles: c’est la lubricité seule qui vous a effacé en l’ame la memoire des vail¬lances & vertuz du bon Roy: vostre espoux, & mon pere: c’est un desir effrené qui a conduit la fille de Rorique à embrasser le tyran Fengon, sans respecter les ombres de Horvuendille, indigne de si estrange traictement, & que son frere l’occist traistreusement, & que sa femme le trayst laschement, laquelle il a tant bien traictee, & pour l’amour de laquelle il a iadis des-pouillé Norvege de richesses, & despeuplé d’hommes vaillans pour accroistre les thresors de Ro-rique, & rendre Geruthe l’espouse du plus hardi Prince de l’Europe. Ce n’est pas estre femme, & moins Princesse, en laquelle doit reluire toute dou¬ceur, courtoisie, compassion & amitié, que laisser ainsi sa chere geniture à l’abandon de fortune, & entre les mains sanglantes & meurtrieres d’un felon & voleur, les bestes plus farouches n’en sont pas ainsi: car les Lyons, Tigres, onces & Leopardz com¬batent pour la defence de leurs faons, & les oyseaux de bec, griffes & esles resistent à ceux qui veulent voler leur petiz, la ou vous m’exposez & livrez à mort en lieu de me defendre. N’est ce pas me trahir, quand cognois-sant la perversité d’un tyran, & ses desseins, pleins de conseil de mort sur la race, & image de son frere, vous n’ayez sçeu ou daigné trouver les moyens de sauver vostre enfant ou en Suece, ou Norvege ou plus-tost l’exposer aux Anglois, que le laisser la proye de vostre infatue adultere ?
Translation - English “Ah, Queen Geruth! Only bitches consort with more than one and desire to cohabit and couple with many males. It is wantonness alone that wiped from your soul the memory of the valor and virtues of the good King your husband and my father. It is unbridled desire that led Rorik’s daughter to embrace cruel Feng without regard for Horwendil, who in no way deserved to be treated so harshly, slain so traitorously or be-trayed by his wife in so cowardly a way – a wife he had treated well, and for whom he had once stripped Norway of its riches and its brave men in order to swell Rorik’s treasury and make Geruth the wife of the most valiant Prince of Eu-rope. It is unworthy of a woman – let alone a Princess in whom all kindness, courtesy, com-passion and good will should shine – to abandon her beloved progeny to danger and leave him in the bloody, murderous hands of a villainous trai-tor. Even the fiercest beasts are not so base, for lions, tigers, lynxes and leopards fight to defend their young, and birds employ beak, claws and wings to resist those who would steal their nestlings. But you put me in harm’s way and lay me open to death rather than defend me. Did you not betray me when, fully acquainted with the tyrant’s harshness and aware of his inten-tions to eradicate the kinsman and the very im-age of his brother, you neither thought nor deigned to find a way to keep your child from harm in Sweden or Norway or even to risk sending him to the English rather than to lay him open as the prey of your besotted adulterer?
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Translation education
PhD - University of Arizona
Experience
Years of experience: 53. Registered at ProZ.com: Dec 2008.
Since translating two French plays for the University of Arizona Drama Department in the early 1970s (Feydeau's Une Puce à l'oreille and Molière's Dom Juan), I have fairly constantly been providing translations for everyone from colleagues to my students to the Vermont National Guard. In particular, as I began reading and publishing papers on Québec literature and culture, including its colonial history, colleagues began asking me if they could use my translations of colonial texts. With a full-time teaching career, however, I published fairly seldom. Two recent projects were completed:
In 2003, I began a collaboration with Georges Anglade, a Haitian author, which culminated in the publication of a bilingual edition of his short stories in 2006 (Rire haïtien/Haitian Laughter). In his review published in the Haitian Times, Hugues St. Fort had the following to say: "Two superb features of this magnificent collection by Georges Anglade should be pointed out: the splendid printing work... and the sumptuous English translation by an American professor, Anne Pease McConnell, who recognizes and conveys all the subtleties of the original text written in a “plural” French which is by turns standard, classical, modern, local. Accomplishing such an achievement (they say that translation is treason) is no mean feat."
The group of scholars working on the new Hamlet variorum edition, having concluded that the most probable source used by Shakespeare in composing the play was Belleforest's "Chronicle of Hamlet...", asked me to translate it for publication both on their Web site Hamlet Works and eventually in the variorum edition when it appears. It has been available on the Web site since 2010.
Now six months into retirement from full-time teaching, I am looking forward to concentrating on translation.