Multi-Media

 We’ve had rain for 3 days and though it has stopped for a few hours, we’re now being treated to a mean mistral wind and I can hear things being blown off of terraces and clattering down the streets.

Weather like this makes me long to take the couch for a little television and a warm blanket. I’ve had a TV now for almost 4 months and I always forget to watch it. It’s really a good learning tool and I keep vowing to remember to watch it. Last night I really meant it…this was it! And I had even purchased a TV guidebook for the occasion.  I got all settled in nicely under my soft polar fleece blanket, remote control(s) in hand and turned it on…but it wouldn’t stay on. No matter how much I messed with each button (and television remotes and the sheer number of them one needs to actually watch TV have always been a mystery to me), I just couldn’t manage to keep the screen on more than 30 seconds.  One of my very few plans and I couldn’t even carry it through.

I was swearing in French and madly pressing buttons (you know, if you push them harder and a couple of hundred times maybe something will work!) when a friend called and asked if I wanted to watch a movie with him. Saved!  Yes, yes, yes…do you have a blanket? He said he did and then said, in English, “I propose to you we watch Retour vers le Future Trois”.

Think…think…think…oh yes. Back to the Future III.  Okie dokie, that was a pretty simple translation but others are not so much so.

I was thumbing through my precious TV guide, since I have this now-practially-usless-journal, and I came across some other program and movie translations that were pretty funny. The French must really like New York because there is

“New York - Police Judiciare” or Law and Order in English, ”New York-Section Criminelle” which is Law and Order-Criminal Intent, and “New York-Unité Spéciale” which translates from Law and Order-Special Victims Unit.  But then there is “La Loi et l’Ordre” (the law and the order) which is actually the name for the movie called Righteous Kill. Figure that out!

Two of the most popular American TV shows right now are House and Desperate Housewives which are called….”House” and “Desperate Housewives” though when the French actually say the titles it sounds like “ooze” and “doosparah hoozweef”

Scrubs is “Toubib or not Toubib” which is Franglais for Doc or not to Doc. I don’t understand why.  CSI is “Les Experts” (the experts) and The Smurfs becomes “Les Schtroumpfs”…which is such a fun word to say but I have no idea where it comes from. It certainly doesn’t sound French to me!

The Bourne Identity, (this one I only figured out after I read the text) is “La Mort dans la Peau” which translates directly to A Death in the Skin (???)and the title to one of my favorite movies  Breakfast at Tiffany’s is “Diamants sur Canapé” or Diamonds on the Couch.  I’m so sorry Holly Golightly but I guess, when I think about it,  I'd choose diamonds on the couch before breakfast at Tiffany's any day!

But probably my two favorite translations in this week’s movie listings are “L’Homme qui Murmurait a l”Oreille des Chevaux” or The Man Who Murmurs in the Ear of Horses which is….or course…The Horse Whisperer.  And last but not least “Les Dent de la Mer” or The Teeth of the Sea.  Jaws!

I hope I get the TV fixed because this wind is just the weather taking a deep breath before it produce more rain. And tonight’s movie pick in my little Télé Magazine is “Un Marriage de Rêve” or a Marriage of Dreams. But I just searched the Internet for the English title and it’s Easy Virtue. This just doesn’t compute.