Simple comme œBonjour


Alongside œs™il vous plaît and œmerci, œbonjour is one of the first words a person learns when studying French. One would think, then, that it would be among the easiest to translate. Think again.

The other day I had to translate a speech given by a senior manager of a company to a group of employees gathered at the start of a internal seminar. The speech started with œBonjour ! Hands poised above the keyboard, ready to plunge in, I suddenly hesitated. œHello would be too casual and wouldn™t set any tone. œGood morning would set the tone of the start of a working session, but was the speech actually given in the morning? œGood afternoon would have a different feel to it, communicating less of a working atmosphere, or at least giving the impression that the work had already begun. œLadies and gentlemen would be used to address the public, not employees of the company. œFellow employees would be a little disingenuous and œTeam members would ring equally hollow. It would also depart more from the original œtext and move squarely into the realm of interpretation. How closely did I need to stick to the original text anyway?, I asked myself.

In the end, as silly as the question might have sounded, I asked the client at what time of day the speech was actually given. She said in the afternoon, but still wanted œGood morning, because of the same issues I had tossed around in my head!

Does anyone else have a story about a very simple word or phrase that posed a problem in a translation?

Steven Sklar
traduction@sklarsteven.com

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