Lost In Translation

Translation is not an exact science. Think about all the sayings we have in English that wouldn’t make sense to a foreign person who took them literally…

“Spend a penny” “Mad as a box of frogs” “Spanner in the works”

When translations go wrong the effects can be disastrous. A missed word, or even a single erroneous letter, can change the meaning of a sentence completely. I love reading French menus the staff have translated into English for this reason. “Grandmother’s balls with pistachio” or “warm goat dung on toast” anyone? You’d have thought a ski resort press office would have forked out for a proper translator, but apparently not – leading to my favourite translation mistake so far. Sainte Foy’s Winter 2016 English press pack had the resort’s tagline as:

The Sainte Foy spirit will impregnate you. Ski differently. You will never be the same.

If that isn’t doesn’t sound like a threat I don’t know what does. And, bless them, that was how they were trying to tempt English people to book a holiday in the resort.

Drinking in France: Showing Them How To Do It

In rural France you don’t get bars or pubs as we know them. In England we get home from work at 6ish, get the tea straight on and get down the pub for about 7.30. By 10 we’re a bit tipsy – if you make it to 12 things have probably got out of hand. Possibly because they all have a 2-hour lunch break and they’ve got work to catch up on, or possibly because they’re enjoying the weather or napping, in rural France no-one emerges from their homes until at least 9ish, when they usually go to a restaurant for a long late dinner with a few drinks. The continental way, you start drinking later and it’s with food so you don’t get drunk. But where’s the fun in that?

Eating in France: Jaffa Cake Revolution

When my boyfriend first asked me to fill any gaps in my hand luggage with packs of bacon and cheddar cheese, I thought he was joking – and a bit odd. But he’s right that the bacon is not the same in France, it’s streaky strips or fatty lardons. I’ve also found it hard to find a decent fat juicy sausage – many of them are thin long things that pinder up under the grill and don’t have much taste. There’s a heck of a lot of cheese and it’s served with practically every meal – not just after Christmas dinner when it’s opened and hardly touched as in England – but you won’t easily find a strong mature cheddar taste equivalent. I know these are the types of things you can hanker after when you’ve lived away for a while, but when I told him I had no room left in my suitcase and he exclaimed “Well strap it to your thighs then!” I thought he’d gone a bit far.

The Lunchtime Catch 22

If you’re looking for lunch out, lunchtime is not the best time to do it. Because the shops that sell lunch close for lunch. Yes you heard right. The spa, the boulangerie, the bakery, the places that sell your quiche and pie and a bit of cake – all the things you want most at lunchtime out of all the other times of day – are closed so the staff can have their own lunches. Because it’s lunchtime. This absolute rigid refusal to change centuries of tradition and give in to the demands of the market, whatever state your business might be in, is another characteristic of the French.

France Doesn’t Do Fast Food

They’ve not got the hang of fast food yet in France. We went on a long drive to the Alps in January, and stopping at a service station I was shocked at what I found. There were jars with what looked like pickled organs or medical experiments gone wrong in them. And the sandwiches were so sloppy you couldn’t even pick them out of the wrappers without them disintegrating. “Just stop at a restaurant, take a couple of hours and a few carafes and don’t be in such a hurry” you can hear French culture moaning on the breeze. Apparently last year was the first time fast food sales took more of the lunch market than traditional brasseries but they’ve really still got some way to go. With McDonald’s however they do have the right idea. Heineken! On the drive-thru drinks menu. Brilliant.

Drinking In France: Wine Not?

You have to keep your wits about you in France as it’s easy to get suckered into drinking wine and forgetting you have work to do. It was common in the days of Fleet Street for everyone to get a bit plastered at lunchtime, though now any sort of day drinking is much frowned upon in England except when it’s someone’s last day or birthday or around Christmas or a Friday. In France that proud tradition is not dead, particularly among the manual workers who drive heavy machinery.