Category: Translating and interpreting

Books and music, Translating and interpreting

The dress and the ladder

I wanted to share a song that I’ve been preoccupied by a little. It’s a song by the French singer-songwriter Francis Cabrel and, when put prosaically, couldn’t be more French. An adult looks back at a formative sexual experience of his adolescence, when he – basically – looked up the dress of a girl who had climbed up a tree ahead of him. Put like that, it sounds prurient and a bit pervy. So far, so middle aged French singer-songwriter. Continue reading “The dress and the ladder”

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Just like two women
Books and music, Translating and interpreting

Just like two women

Francis Cabrel is one of my favourite singer-songwriters, coming from the region of France where I lived for ten years. I learnt much of my French from his songs, as he writes with a great deal of intelligence and poetic sensibility and love for language and music – in the best tradition of la Chanson Francaise but also set apart from it.

His new album, however, has raised some questions and for me it’s an opportunity to think about translation a little. Continue reading “Just like two women”