The awkward translations of the French election
As the nation of France has been continuingly gripped by the race for the French presidency, the fate of their countries political affairs and futures are at stake. With the first round of voting, which was held on 23rd April 2017 indicating no majority winner the two most voted for candidates, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face off in a run-off election this week on Sunday 7th May 2017 to decide who will become the next French president. Now the slogans of each political party is usual something that sends a clear strong message across to the public that embodies the whole ethos of the party in a short phrase so least to say they are pretty important, but how much meaning do they lose once translation services are used to make it legible in another language?
In an article originally reported by international new network FRANCE24 they take a look at how each of the potential French president’s slogans and party names translate from French to English. They started with the most awkward English translation, that of the far-leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Mélenchon’s campaign was named “La France Insoumise” which makes complete sense in French but in English has been awkwardly translated to “Unsubmissive France” by FRANCE24 journalist Florence Villeminot, although the author of the article Christine Buckley noted that another of their journalist suggested the phrase to be translated to “Indomitable France” whilst others like Politico have used “France Untamed”, The New York Times went with “France Unbowed” and “Rebellious France.” This just goes to show that there are many different ways that words can be translated and even the best French translation services can be in disagreement of a translation.
The rest of the campaigns translation into English were more or less straight forward with the conservative François Fillon slogan being “Le courage de la verité” which translates to “The Courage of Truth” and Buckley commented on the fact that ironically the truth part was not so accurate as he had been plagued with scandals so the slogan was swiftly changed to “Une volonté pour la France” or “Willpower for France”. To which political activists then changed to “Un vol pour la France” which actually means “Theft for France,” due to the scandal involving Fillon. Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon’s slogan read “Faire battre le Cœur de la France” which translated well into English, “Make France’s Heart Beat Again.
Of the two remaining candidates left running for the presidency, far right’s Marine Le Pen’s campaign slogan is simply “Au Nom du Peuple !” which means “In the Name of the People!” in English. Her opposition on the other hand centrist Emmanuel Macron’s “En Marche” campaign was meant to translate to “Onward!”, but like most translations this was up for debate with some English language-based media outlets using the terms “Forward” or “On Our Way”. Saying this political translations are not unlike marketing or retail translation services as many political parties just like businesses will have a slogan to sum up what they are about or represent and these phrases can easily be misconstrued when being translated into other languages and essentially lose their impact or their meaning altogether.
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