Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 July 25

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July 25

㞎㞎, 屎, 粪, dung, poop, feces, shit, excrement, doo-doo, poo-poo, manure

In English, there are so many words for feces. Shit is derived from Old English, and feces is derived from Latin. The Latin term is also more polite than the Germanic term. I looked up on yabla.com, which reports that 㞎㞎 is a children's term. But I don't know why there are two grown-up/adult/mature terms for feces. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:12, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

You said it yourself. Feces is the medical term, appropriate in all contexts, but shit, while heard in many more places these days than formerly (e.g. TV, movies), is still considered rude or impolite and is not available during your audience with the Queen, for example. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:31, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

No, I was referring to the Chinese terms, not English ones. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:34, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

It's similar. My impression is that 粪便 is the medical term, while 屎 is closer to "shit", as in the slang expression 吃屎 which means eat shit. There is also 排泄物 (excrement) and 大便, slightly more euphemistic in both Chinese and Japanese. Alex Shih^Talk 01:53, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

As Alex said, 屎(shi) is the more informal term, and informally it also means any sort of messy/unclean secretion, e.g. ear wax when combined with "ear". In Cantonese, it means "concrete" when combined with "rock". In older scripts, the shape of the character can clearly be seen to be a side view of a person squatting, with pellets under its butt, so it is probably the older word.

粪(fen) was originally a euphemism, as its original meaning was "to remove". The oracle script form was composed of a person holding a broom with a pan of detritus. Over time it came also to mean "to apply manure as fertiliser", and eventually just "manure". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:12, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

That's a fascinating meaning-symbol association. Our article on gong farmer (the "sanitary engineers" of Tudor England) says that "gong" derives from "to go". And modern-day manual scavenging still takes place with little more than a broom and a pan. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 08:29, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Translation Request - for article on French cartoonist

I recently created an article for a French cartoonist / animator known as Pozla - which has been difficult, since I don't actually speak or read French myself, and pretty much all of the sources are in French, haha. Google translate has been able to suffice for the most part. But there are some spots where I could still use help with translating. Particularly:

• If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this Google Books preview [1], you should see a profile on Pozla - the profile starts on the preview's second-to-last page. The final sentence of that page says, "Il coréalise notamment la saison 2 de la série Lascars et signe le générique du long métrage du même nom." I'm aware that this is essentially discussing Pozla's involvement with the TV series Lascars and the feature film of the same name, but I'm curious what Pozla's specific role was with the feature film. Google translate is telling me that he "signed the credits" of the film. Can someone offer a better translation? Does this simply mean that he "appears in the credits of the film" - i.e. he worked on the film in some vague, undefined capacity? Or does it mean that he specifically worked on creating the credits of the film? Some films have artwork or animated sequences during the credits, and since Pozla is an artist / animator, it seems possible that he may have been involved in the film in such a capacity.

• Further down, on the final page of the Google Books preview, I'm having trouble with the second paragraph, which starts with "Artiste, graffiti à ses heures perdues..." and ends with "...pour l'exposition Joyeux Bordel." It seems to be talking about various art exhibitions that Pozla has done, but I can't quite make sense of all the details. If someone could either offer a full translation of that paragraph, or at least help me understand it well enough, so that I can include the important details onto Pozla's page, that would be a huge help! :)

There are actually a few more sources that I'm having trouble with - but I don't want to ask for too much, so I'll just stick with these two requests for now. If anyone is interested in the topic and wants to help me further, then that would be awesome! But any help at all would be appreciated! :) Thanks! --Jpcase (talk) 17:16, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

First question: "he was co-producer of season 2 of the series Lascars and wrote (or created) the credits for the film of the same name." The latter would make sense if the credits were animated. Second question: I can't see the preview page, but I actually have a copy of the booklet it's from at home, so if no one comes by to translate it for you in the next couple of hours, I'll dig it out and translate it for you. Contact me on my talk page if you need any other assistance. --Xuxl (talk) 19:29, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

1. "générique" is not the credits, but the "theme song" + any video/animation that goes with it. (The sentence does not say if he wrote the lyrics or the music, or the animation, or all three). Also "coréalise" is not co-produce, but co-direct.

2. I cannot see that page in my preview. I seem to have access to a different set of pages from what you have. But happy to translate the paragraph if you can paste it here or on my talk page. --Lgriot (talk) 19:42, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xuxl: @Lgriot: Thank you both for the help! Google translate is giving both "co-produce" and "co-direct" as possible translations of "coréalise". Is there a way to be certain which is meant? I'd like to be able to state accurately what Pozla's role was on the series. As for the feature film - I managed to find this [2], which clarifies that Pozla did indeed create the opening credits of the film. There's a song played over the credits, so "theme song" would be a reasonable description for the segment as well.

Here's the full paragraph that I'm needing help with for Question 2:

"Artiste, graffiti à ses heures perdues, membre du collectif GM (Gentlemen), il continue de peindre en grand et de s'amuser avec l'univers urbain. Il parsème son parcours d'expositions collectives ou solo : Galerie Chappe, les rues d'Arles et le Gutenberg Museum en Suisse en 2010, la Galerie Sergent Paper avec le collectif GM et pour Monkey Bizness, ou, plus récemment, à la Galerie L'Attrape Rêve avec ses acolytes Alexöne et Mokë pour l'exposition Joyeux Bordel."

Xuxl - that's funny that you own the book! Is it well known in France? I'm curious - how would you translate the title of the book into English? Jpcase (talk) 21:25, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

The book was a giveaway with the Saturday edition of Le Monde a couple of years ago. There were a series of 10 or so books of the same type, all a short mystery set in a different city in France, with a famous cartoonist doing the illustrations, with a famous writer contributing the story. The books also contained touristic information about the city where the book was set. It was co-sponsored by the SNCF to encourage readers to discover these cities for themselves. The one by Pozla and Michel Quint is set in Lille. The title could be translated as "So close to unhappiness in Lille". As for the paragraph: "A grafitti artist in his spare time, a member of the group GM (Gentlemen), he continues to create large-scale paintings and to have fun with the urban environment. His professional career includes a number of solo or group exhibitions: at the Galerie Chappe, in the streets of Arles, and at the Gutenberg Museum in Switzerland in 2010, at the Sergent Paper Gallery with the GM Group and for "Monkey Bizness", and, more recently, at the Galerie l'Attrape Rêve with his accomplices Alexöne and Mokë for the Joyeux Bordel (Happy Bordello) exhibit." I assume from the context that the large-scale paintings are urban murals. --Xuxl (talk) 22:28, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

ps. I'm not sure where Lgriot gets that "le générique" [3] is the theme song; it is the part of a film or television program that includes the credits; there may be a theme song playing in the background, but that's not the main thing. See the link for confirmation. --Xuxl (talk) 22:35, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

I translate it like this for 2 reasons:

1. It is not how the word is used by most people in France. When they speak about "Les generique tele des annees 80" they do not refer to the credits, but to something like this: [4] As you can see, only the sound track seems to matter to them.

2. In the context of the sentence, it does not make any sense to "sign the credits". Signing a piece of music, however, does kind of make sense (like signing a painting), so I was (safely apparently) assuming the author was using the more common meaning of the word, rather than this formal definition on the French Wikipedia, which is alien to me anyway, and the author was referring to some sort of artwork, rather than telling us that a guy signed a list of scrolling names. --Lgriot (talk) 13:50, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Now let's try to translate this:

"Artiste, graffiti à ses heures perdues, membre du collectif GM (Gentlemen), il continue de peindre en grand et de s'amuser avec l'univers urbain. Il parsème son parcours d'expositions collectives ou solo : Galerie Chappe, les rues d'Arles et le Gutenberg Museum en Suisse en 2010, la Galerie Sergent Paper avec le collectif GM et pour Monkey Bizness, ou, plus récemment, à la Galerie L'Attrape Rêve avec ses acolytes Alexöne et Mokë pour l'exposition Joyeux Bordel."

"Artist, graffiti (maker) in his spare time, member of the GM (Gentlemen) artist collective, he continues to make grand paintings and to have fun with the urban universe. He spreads upon his course (path ?) some collective or solo exhibitions: the "Chappe" gallery, the streets of Arles, and the Gutenberg Museum in Switzerland in 2010, the "Sergent Paper" gallery with the GM artist collective and one for Monkey Bizness, or more recently in "L'Attrape Rêve" gallery with his sidekicks Alexöne and Mokë for the "Joyeux Bordel" exhibition."

"Joyeux Bordel" is a play on worlds. it sounds like "joyeux noel" which means Merry Christmas. The best translation I can think of is "Merry Mess", because a "bordel" is a messy place (strictly, it's a brothel, but the meaning has extended to any place that isn't organised in a proper fashion).

This whole thing is in the present tense in French, which sorts of works for me as we often do this for naration, but maybe the past tense would work better in English.

Hope this helps.--Lgriot (talk) 14:10, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Final point, on directing or producing: I cannot be sure what he did on that piece of work, but I have to say I have never seen anyone on TV, newspaper interviews, or panel discussions, mix up their use of these words when discussing movie making: "réalisateur" = director, "producteur" = producer. I don't know what google translate is playing at, all I can tell you is that I lived the first 27 years of my life in France, and spoke nearly exclusively French for all those years (and watched too much TV for my own good). That is the only authority I have. --Lgriot (talk) 14:37, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xuxl: @Lgriot: Thank you again, both of you, for the help! :)

In regards to the "credits / theme song" question - the video that I linked to above pretty much clears this up. Pozla created the animation for the opening credits sequence, which includes a song - so either translation would be fairly accurate.

Xuxl - does "co-direct" seem like an accurate translation of "coréalise" to you? I'd be curious to hear whether you agree with Lgriot on this. Also - thanks for the description of the Michel Quint book! Up to this point, my familiarity with Pozla hasn't extended much further than his involvement with the student film Le Building. I'm trying to create articles for each of that film's directors - which has been a little daunting, since I, sadly, have have no French language abilities and only minimal knowledge of French culture. So I'm glad to have gained a better understanding of Pozla's additional body of work!

Coréalise can be both co-produce or co-direct, but in this case, if he has other directing credits in film or tv, co-direct is likely correct. --Xuxl (talk) 18:28, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Pozla has done much directing - mostly, he's done comic book art and animating. But he does have at least a few other directing credits, so I'd consider "co-direct" to be the most likely translation in this context. Jpcase (talk) 19:33, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Google translate is giving So Close to Misfortune in Lille as a possible English translation of the book's title. Do either of you have an opinion on whether "Misfortune" or "Unhappiness" is a better translation?

I'm noticing that in the top right corner of the book's cover page, it says "Le petits polars" - is this the title for the ten-book series as a whole? Any thoughts on how this would be translated?

Final question (for now at least - I have more, if either of you are up for it, haha) - do either of you know what the "Gutenberg Museum in Switzerland" is? The only Gutenberg Museum that we have an article for here on the English Wikipedia is located in Germany. Jpcase (talk) 16:03, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

The Gutenberg Museum: Swiss museum of graphic industry and communication has been at Freiburg since 2005. Alansplodge (talk) 16:27, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

@Alansplodge: Thanks for the link! It's a shame that no one's created an article for it on the English Wiki, but I managed to find one on the French Wiki, so I've included an inter-language link to it on Pozla's page. Jpcase (talk) 19:33, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

"Misfortune" or "Unhappiness": that is a hard one. The word "Malheur" in French is more often used to mean misfortune than unhappiness especially when countable (e.g. "Il lui est arrivé un malheur"), but here it looks like it is used as the opposite of "bonheur", which means more often happiness than good fortune. Based on the synopsis on page 5, I would say unhappiness, until I have read the whole book(I won't, though). --Lgriot (talk) 17:26, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

A "polar" is a crime novel, more or less. The series is called "les petits polars" because it was made up of short books (about 40 pages in length, including illustrations) all in that literary vein. There were three series under that name published during successive summers (2012, 2013 and 2014), each numbering 10 or 12 titles. The one that Pozla illustrated is from the third series. --Xuxl (talk) 18:23, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xuxl: @Lgriot: I'll go ahead and translate it as "Unhappiness" then. Any guesses on how Les Petits Polars would translate into English? The Short Crime Novels? The Short Crimes? The Short Mysteries? Google Translate is suggesting The Small Thrillers. Would any of those be accurate, or does it simply not translate very well into English?

Short Thrillers would work. --Xuxl (talk) 20:15, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm also curious about how the titles of Pozla's graphic novels would translate. He's written four that I'm aware of -

• Monkey Bizness: Arnaque, Banane, et Cacahuetès

• Monkey Bizness 2: Les Cacahuètes Sont Cuites

• Monkey Bizness 3: La Banane du Futur

• Carnet de santé foireuse

The subtitles for the three Monkey Bizness volumes seem straightforward enough. Google Translate is suggesting Scam, Banana, and Peanuts for Volume 1, The Peanuts are Cooked or The Peanuts are Baked for Volume 2, and The Banana of the Future for Volume 3. Does that check out?

The fourth one, Carnet de santé foireuse, is a little trickier though. Google translate it giving me multiple possibilities for that one. Any ideas? --Jpcase (talk) 19:33, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

It's a play on words that means something like "Poor health report". Santé foireuse is slang for poor health, and a carnet de santé is a health report. The two expressions have been combined into a single title. --Xuxl (talk) 20:15, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

For context a "Carnet de santé" is a little book everyone has (or is recommended to have) in France where doctors mark all the vaccines, issues, treatments, blood sample analysis results, and weight and other measurements since childhood. The patient or his/her parents keep the booklet, no the doctor. So it is more like a health "journal"? It is pretty thick and looks like this: [5] & [6] with some pages for growth charts etc.

@Xuxl: thanks for the translation, and @Lgriot: thanks for the additional info.

Regarding the Monkey Bizness series, I'm just curious - is "Scam" how you would both translate the word "Arnaque"? Scam, Banana, and Peanuts sounds a little bit awkward to me, although I'm not exactly sure why.

For volume 2, is there any way of telling whether the word "Cooked" or "Baked" would be a better translation of the word "Cuites"? I've never read the comic myself, so I'm not exactly sure what the title is referring to. I would guess that it might be meant figuratively though, and isn't referring to literal cooked / baked peanuts. In English at least, "Baked" could be taken as a marijuana reference, while "cooked" could mean that the characters are in some sort of trouble - would those dual meanings make sense in French as well? --Jpcase (talk) 16:27, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

For Arnaque, Banane et Cacahuètes, Arnaque is indeed a scam. I can't see any further word play than the use of the initials A, B and C. "Les Cacahuètes sont cuites" is a play on the expression "les carottes sont cuites" (the carrots are cooked) which is somewhat equivalent to "(my or his) goose is cooked". --Xuxl (talk) 18:50, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Just a suggestion: maybe "Con" as in con-artist is a better translation of "Arnaque". Kainkenny (talk) 13:30, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xuxl: I think the title for Volume 1 seems a little off to me, just because I'm unaccustomed to seeing the word "Scam" used by itself as a singular noun - "a scam", "the scam", or "scams" all seem more natural. Scams, Bananas, and Peanuts would probably make for a better sounding title in English, but I can clearly see that the words "Arnaque" and "Banane" are singluar in this context.

Thanks for explaining the French idiom to me! I hadn't heard it before, but you're right, we have similar sayings in English.

I seriously can't thank you and Lgriot enough for all of this! I definitely would have been in over my head without you two!

Like I said above, I do still have a few more sources that I'm struggling with - but I definitely don't want to take advantage of you guys, so let me know if it's getting to be too much. What you've already done has been a huge help!

If either of you want to take a crack at it though, one of the additional sources that I have questions about is this interview [7] with Pozla and his Monkey Bizness co-creator, Boris Dolivet (known by the pseudonym ElDiablo).

I'm trying to get a better grasp of ElDiablo's answer to the third question of the interview. The question asked of him is "Comment vous êtes-vous rencontrés ?" (which Google Translate tells me means something along the lines of "How did you meet each other?").

ElDiablo's answer is seven paragraphs long - so I don't need a full translation! I mostly just want to know what ElDiablo says about his time teaching at Gobelins. Jpcase (talk) 13:41, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

P.S.: @Kainkenny: I didn't see your comment until after I had finished writing my own. That's an interesting possibility! Con, Banana, and Peanuts sounds a little smoother to me - curious to get Xuxl and Lgriot's thoughts on this. --Jpcase (talk) 13:46, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

ElDiabo explains that he was a teacher at the Gobelins animation school, which is ironic since he had been kicked out of that school as a first-year student in 1991. He met Pozla while teaching flash animation and he immediately realized Pozla was a genius. They became friends and began working together. It took them a while to figure out which project to do together before settling on Monkey Bizness after meeting another author, Run, who works for the Ankama publishing house. He had already worked out an outline in his head, but together they came up with a finished product. He explains that everyone he works with is first of all a friend; they have to like each other before they start working together and as a result, their collaborations never feels like work, whether or not it leads to publication. It still involves hard work and sleepness nights, though. They have so much fun that he feels a bit guilty getting paid for their work. Pozla then chips in saying for his part, he doesn't feel any guilt, since most artists need another job on the side to make ends meet. It took them 11 months to bring out a 128-page book. It's fun, but also hard work, and the two authors complement one another quite well. --Xuxl (talk) 15:28, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xuxl: Ah, so ElDiablo was expelled or failed out of Gobelins? Very interesting! Google Translate made it sound as though he had taught there, been fired, and then got rehired, which didn't make much sense, haha. Thanks for clearing that up! :)

Another source that I've come across is this [8] article, found on page 13 of a publication called Journal d'Amiens et d'Amiens Métropole. It appears to be a three paragraph profile on Pozla, although I can't copy / paste anything from it, so Google translate isn't much help here. Not knowing what's said in the article, I'm not sure whether a full translation would be useful or if paraphrasing would suffice. Anything at all would be great!

I'm not sure whether you saw my exchange with Kainkenny - what's your opinion on "Con" as a possible translation of "Arnaque"? Would that be equally valid or is "Scam" definitely more fitting? --Jpcase (talk) 22:31, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Con would work as well, although it's very much an American term (not much in use up north in Canada, and even less across the pond I think). As for the newspaper article, it's a profile from a local Amiens paper that has a lot of interesting info. It focuses mainly on "Carnet de santé foireuse" which is based on Pozla's battle with Crohn's disease (he's feeling much better now). It talks of his start as a street artist tagging and drawing graffiti in public spaces and in constant battle with the police. However he took his work to more accepted locales, and now he's been officially recognized as an artist. His pseudonym comes from "Pose là" ("put it there") from his days as a graffiti artist. He returns to his time at Les Gobelins, where he says he did not fit the mold, as they are mainly interested in training the type of commercial animators who would work for Disney or Dreamworks or other big companies. Still, he has worked on some mainstream projects, like Persépolis, but mainly on animating dream-sequence or other non-conventional scenes. The Monkey Bizness series was his first foray into graphic work (bande dessinée). He's now found success, but he still returns to Amiens on a regularly basis and teaches a class at the Waide Somme school, which is a local animation school [9]. --Xuxl (talk) 13:49, 29 July 2017 (UTC)