A rather poetical text though. I wonder if "facing South" fully explain the meaning. I think that you could add something like "impassive" to reinforce the feeling of stillness...
That's only a suggestion.

HTH, Olivier


Ref: spent my childhood in Ajaccio, about 30 km south from Cargèse. ;)

I lived right near Cargese and I think (at least one of these churches is grk orthodox)the "turn into stone" of petrify would fit nicely (they are made of white stone)

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Note added at 2002-01-25 14:06:05 (GMT)
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or perhaps \"petrified under the noon sun\"

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Note added at 2002-01-25 14:48:15 (GMT)
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maybe something like \"From atop their terrasse (the Corsican countryside is \"terrassed\") perch, petrified in/under the midday sun...

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Note added at 2002-01-25 14:49:53 (GMT)
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sorry, that\'s terrace of course

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Note added at 2002-01-25 18:03:47 (GMT)
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In answer to \"le midi\" - it is the equiv. of saying \'the noon hour\" - in literature, I have even seen \"le minuit\".

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Note added at 2002-01-25 18:42:24 (GMT)
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I don\'t think anyone has realized that \"figées\" may be describing the terraces...rather than the churches - in this case, \"Perched above their noon-drenched terraces\" or \"From their sun-drenched terrace perches\" or \"From their (midday) sun-scorched terrace perches etc... I think \"midi\" is just another way of saying \'lots of sun\' by situating the time of day (the hottest) which appeals to tourists. I like sun-scorched because that is really the nature of the Corsican countryside - very dry in summer (aloes cactus and figues de barbarie everywhere)

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Note added at 2002-01-26 10:38:37 (GMT)
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Another suggestion : The hazy line of a garden plot and the curving blue of the Golfe are all that separate these two furies, perched atop their sun-scorched terraces, in their jealous defiance of each other.

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Note added at 2002-01-26 14:58:15 (GMT)
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sorry \"...in their ongoing and jealous defiance of each other.\"

The Midi is absolutely recognized as the South of France

or standing still in the midday sun

not very poetic but...

transfixed in the midday sun

not very good either

but it may give you better ideas

Hi, I am suggesting this to start your sentence buildup up towards the two jealous Furies ...

I both envy you and conmiserate! What a nice but difficult job!

Dee

or settled, established

or "transfixed to the south" (I actually prefer this one)

"figé" in this context may have a double meaning: immoveable and permanent

in French we often used "figé dans le temps" to imply permanence (unchanged in time)

I also thought of caught in the glare of the midday sun but I think the first suggestion works best. I can only think thta "midi" is being used here to refer to the sun at its brightest hottest.

stupefied isn't a direct translation of fige but it gets the meaning across and I rather liked the alliteration!

A quick search on Google with “cargèse église” gives plenty of hits – descriptions, pictures all sorts of info about the two churches your text no doubt refers too. They obviously stand out!

What bugs me here first of all is the use of “terrasse” with a church. Apparently, it can also refer to a flat roof (cf. GDT terrasse > batîment 1/5). But that may be neither here nor there.

http://www.corsica.net/corsica/fr/regajac/cargese/carg_egl.h...

A Cargèse, se faisant face, l'Eglise Grecque et l'Eglise Latine recèlent, toutes deux, une infinité de témoignages de l'histoire locale.

Now to "figé". Something which is « figé » is fixed, ossified, rigid. How about a synonym? Perhaps it doesn’t really matter whether you find a strict translation of the word “figé” as long as you convey the idea of something solid and proud which stands up to anything, soundly established.

Indomitable, unassailable, entrenched, soundly rooted,

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/thesaurus

Entry Word: entrench
Function: verb
Text: 1 to establish so solidly or strongly as to make dislodgment or change extremely difficult <prejudices entrenched for generations>
Synonyms embed, fix, infix, ingrain, lodge, root...

Soundly entrenched by the Mediterranean (tradition?)


Moving onto "le Midi". Strictly speaking "LE Midi" can only mean the Mediterranean. Many people refer to "le midi" as if it were a time, which is not so. This drives my husband mad. We should not say "le/midi", apparently, no more than anyone ought to say "ce dix heures". I'm sure you will see what I mean. However, the use of the definite article indicates that it is referring to the place, assuming there is no error in the use of the noun "midi" (ie, that the writer is not using this to mean time, which is pretty non-sensical here in my view,) bar the forgotten capital letter.



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Note added at 2002-01-26 00:50:11 (GMT)
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This is a strange one indeed. However you decide to render \"figées\", whether it refers to the terraces of the churches, then the real puzzle is just what \"le midi\" as written is referring to. Strictly speaking, the use of the definite article excludes the possibility that it is in reference to a moment in time - but then there are constantly recurring examples in the media of this misuse. I cannot make sense of it in reference to a time of day. However, if referring to the South of France, the Med (more loosley, I agree, but never the less a common way of referring to the coastal regions of the South of France for Brits anyway - sorry Meri, but that use is also confirmed by the Robert Collins, p565 my edition), then for all these high-perched churches face each other on their terraced embankments, what has the South of France got to do with it indeed, as Cargese does not face the S. of France anyway?

Street map of Cargese showing position of the Greek and R.C. churches :

http://cargese.univ-corse.fr/Pagese/Plancargese.html

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Note added at 2002-01-26 01:01:08 (GMT)
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This is a strange one indeed. However you decide to render \"figées\", whether it refers to the terraces of the churches, then the real puzzle is just what \"le midi\" as written is referring to. Strictly speaking, the use of the definite article excludes the possibility that it is in reference to a moment in time - but then there are constantly recurring examples in the media of this misuse. I cannot make sense of it in reference to a time of day. However, if referring to the South of France, the Med (more loosley, I agree, but never the less a common way of referring to the coastal regions of the South of France for Brits anyway - sorry Meri, but that use is also confirmed by the Robert Collins, p565 my edition), then for all these high-perched churches face each other on their terraced embankments, what has the South of France got to do with it indeed, as Cargese does not face the S. of France anyway?

Street map of Cargese showing position of the Greek and R.C. churches :

http://cargese.univ-corse.fr/Pagese/Plancargese.html

How "midi" is read in this sentence is clearly the key to how the rest of the sentence should be read...

To the French, anything south of the cloudy greyness of most of France, is far enough south for the sun to count as being straight overhead; that is, at that central point above that we refer to as the sky's zenith. Thus, the famous translation, Purple Noon, of René Clair's famous movie, Plein Soleil (1958). The white light in the whole film practically wipes out all color.

The French in your sentence is verging on the overblown, but I like poetic images, so here's my rendition of the whole thing (with thanks to Colin McKinney, who hit upon "transfixed.":

De leurs terrasses figées par le midi, elles se défient encore comme deux furies jalouses, vaguement séparées par un arpent de potager et l'anse bleue du golfe

Transfixed by the noonday sun and scarcely separated by a garden patch and the azure inlet from the gulf, those jealous furies rise from their terraces, facing one off against one another.

A few additional notes:

"Transfixed," along with carrying the meaning of "riveted and immobile,"gives a flavo(u)r of "churchiness."

I've rearranged the order of the sentence-English syntax isn't as flexible as French, so position in the sentence more important for highlighting/backgrounding the various aspects (French achieves that by putting subjects/objects/verbs in an unusual, but grammatically acceptable, order).

From their sunbaked hillside terraces, they still defy like two jealous furies, vaguely separated by a stretch of ancient kitchen garden and the blue handle of the gulf.