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French to English: Sylvie Gemain General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - French
Héloïse n’avait jamais quitté ses quelques arpents de terre broussailleuse entourés de pommiers, de frênes et de trembles aux branchages tordus par le vent. Elle avait atteint un très grand âge au long duquel elle n’avait connu d’autres aventures que celles, muettes, des bancs de nuages en haute transhumance, celles, si vives, des volées d’oiseaux en migration, et celles, tout en frissons et bruissements, des arbres en feuillaison, en floraison et en défeuillaison.
Le gris ardoise qui longtemps avait été le sien s’était fané, il avait pris un ton d’un blanc cendreux. Tout son être semblait s’être ainsi étamé de cendre et de poussière, et sa voix particulièrement.
Le cri lui tenait lieu tout à la fois de parole, de chant, de plainte et de murmure, avait perdu toute vigueur ; il ne se languissait plus désormais qu’en furtifs râles tout grenus de tristesse. Il se levait soudain, mais ne s’élançait pas ; c’était un cri sans modulation et sans force, un sanglot assourdi.
Celle qui avait acheté cette ânesse plus de vingt ans auparavant l’avait ainsi nommée parce que le nom d’Héloïse la tourmentait depuis l’enfance. Elle-même s’appelait Marthe, mais elle n’avait jamais aimé son prénom qu’elle trouvait trop dur, et du jour où, encore petite fille, elle avait découvert cet autre nom, si léger, si fluide, elle n’avait eu de cesse de le désirer pour elle-même. Pendant des années elle s’était entêtée à réclamer ce nom à ses parents, les suppliant de le lui offrir à Noël ou à son anniversaire en guise de cadeau. Elle reçut des jouets, des livres d’images, des poupées – que bien sûr elle appelait toutes Héloïse - , mais jamais ce prénom dont la douceur la faisait tant rêver.
Translation - English Héloïse had never left her few square acres of scrub land surrounded by apple and ash trees and aspens with branches twisted by the wind. She had reached a great age, and over the course of her life she had never known any adventures other than those silent ones of banks of high migrating clouds; those, so alive, of flocks of migrating birds, and those shivering rustling ones of trees growing leaves, flowering, and then losing their leaves again.
Her slate grey colour, hers for so long, had faded and taken on the white hue of cinders. Her entire being seemed to be marred in this way, but her voice, above all, was eroded by ashes and dust.
The cry which takes the place of speech, song, lament and whisper had lost all its strength; it henceforth languished, only groaning with a furtiveness filled with sadness. It would rise up suddenly, but not take full flight; it was a cry without variation and without force, a muffled sob.
She who had bought this female donkey more than twenty years ago had named it thus because the name Héloïse had tormented her since childhood. She was really called Marthe, but she had never liked her name, which she found too harsh, and from the day, when she was still a little girl, when she had discovered this other name, so light, so fluid, she hadn’t stopped wanting it for herself. For years she had kept demanding this name from her parents, begging them to give it to her for Christmas or for her birthday as a kind of present. She received toys, picture books, dolls- all of which, of course, she called Héloïse - but never this name, whose sweetness transported her into a land of dreams.
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Years of experience: 15. Registered at ProZ.com: Jun 2010.
I am a student at the University of Cambrige, Corpus Christi College, studying for a degree in French and Russian. I also have a high level of Spanish, as evidenced by my AEA certificate in this language, as well as French. I have been translating on a voluntary basis for a year, and now wish to break into the paid market.
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