Translating the French Election for the Freedom-Fry Audience – The New Yorker

Only twenty-seven days remain before the first round of the French Presidential election, but it wasnt until the beginning of March that the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, got around to formally entering the race. There were strategic reasons for the slow rollout, but, as Russias assault on Ukraine intensified, a showy announcement seemed inappropriate, leading Macron to cancel a rally in Marseille. The contrast between Macrons schedule and those of the other candidates was kickoff enough. On Monday, conservative candidate Valrie Pcresse (Les Rpublicains) visited the iconic Salon de lAgriculture, a national farming fair which takes place every year in the south of Paris, Gilles Paris noted, in Le Monde. Communist candidate Fabien Roussel also wandered among cows, sheep, wines, cheeses, and other delicatessen producers. Emmanuel Macron for his part, spent his morning in a national security council meeting in the Elyse palaces war room and talked on the phone for ninety minutes with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The above passage required no translation: Paris was writing in a daily report called The French Test, the first column that Le Monde, Frances leading center-left newspaper, has published in English. It aims to guide Anglophone readers through the twists and turns of a French campaign, presuming an audience of international readers, in addition to, as Paris explained recently, people living in France with not that good French. The idea is to be useful and, if possible, funny. So be it if Paris must patiently identify the main players and their parties, explain the two-round voting system, remember not to use liberal to describe someone who favors minimal government, and emphasize that the heavily regulated French campaign-financing system renders the Presidential contest roughly equivalent, financially, to a Senate race in South Dakota. Neither is the occasional infelicityEric Zemmour can hardly be accused of antisemitism as he is a Jewish of North African descentan obstacle. Im totally comfortable with the fact that Im a French guy writing in English, Paris said.

The column is published each day at 1 P.M. Paris time7 A.M. in New York. We are obviously targeting the East Coast, Paris said. The U.S. is the Anglophone country he knows best, having just returned, last summer, from a seven-year stint as Le Mondes Washington correspondent. He travelled to forty-seven states (still missing: Hawaii, Alaska, Maine), took several R.V. trips, and came to love drip coffee (I know! I know!). The French Test is inspired, in part, by the kind of pithy, aphoristic political writing that Paris learned from reading Beltway commentators. When I was much younger, I loved William Safire columns, he said. He was so funny, so cruel. And Maureen Dowd also is this kind of columnist, except when shes writing about Thanksgiving lunch with her Republican brother.

The center-right president of the French Senate has already complained that the abbreviated campaign risks creating a crisis of legitimacy. Paris, however, sees this election as the most consequential in decadesnot in terms of the personalities involved but in its potential for completing the restructuring of French party politics that began when Macron, a former minister in Hollandes Socialist government, blew up the party to start his own movement, in 2016. This year, the center-right Rpublicains may meet their end if they fail, for the second time in a row, to field a candidate who progresses past the first round of voting. If that happens, the two pillars of the Fifth Republic will be done, Paris said. As he grapples with the passive forms of English verbs and scans WordReference.com for the closest English equivalent of such French idioms as avoir le cul entre deux chaises (to have your ass between two chairs), i.e., to be undecided, the stakes are changing quickly. Some people believe the war in Ukraine might stifle the electoral campaign. On the contrary, it takes all its meaning. It brings issues of life and death to the forefront and the voters will give their opinion during the two rounds of the presidential election, in April, he wrote earlier this month, without forgetting, amid the turmoil, to flag the two-round system once again.

Read more:

Translating the French Election for the Freedom-Fry Audience - The New Yorker