{"id":3634,"date":"2013-03-06T10:22:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T10:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=3634"},"modified":"2013-03-06T10:22:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T10:22:29","slug":"54-great-opening-lines-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=3634","title":{"rendered":"54 great opening lines: 15"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mother died today.<\/p>\n

The Outsider<\/em>, Albert Camus (trans. by Stuart Gilbert.\u00a0 Originally L’\u00e9tranger<\/em>)<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Yesterday (no. 14) I posted the first line from The Outsiders<\/em>.\u00a0 With a final s.\u00a0 Different book, different author, but the same theme of a protagonist who feels like he’s outside of society.\u00a0 Like a misfit.<\/p>\n

Today’s post is about The Outsider<\/em> by Albert Camus.\u00a0 Thousands of words have been penned and keyed about his opening line.\u00a0 In French, it is ‘Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.’\u00a0 Literally, ‘Today, Mum died.’\u00a0 Three words that various translators render variously.\u00a0 Today, Mother died.\u00a0 Today, Mummy died.\u00a0 Today, my mother died.\u00a0 My mother died today.\u00a0 Mum died today.\u00a0 Mummy died today.\u00a0 Mama died today.\u00a0 Today, mum is dead.\u00a0 If it’s published in the US, Mum would be Mom.<\/p>\n

The maman quandary was mine when I translated the short story Origami<\/em><\/a> by Anne Bihan,\u00a0in which a small girl refers to her mother as maman, French for Mum and Mummy.\u00a0 Since the girl is Japanese and the setting is Japan, I searched the web and happily found that some Japanese children are starting to use the European-sounding Mama, which I liked for my translation because of its similarity to Maman, and thought it good for retaining a closeness to the French.\u00a0 (I also liked Mama because one of my sons uses it when addressing me…)\u00a0 Of course, I put myself in the shoes of the little girl and remembered that I used to address my own mother as Mummy.\u00a0 But that doesn’t sound Japanese or French;\u00a0 it sounds English.\u00a0 Or Australian.\u00a0 Like me.<\/p>\n

What about the actual Japanese word for Mum: Okaasan?\u00a0 There’s not really any question of using it;\u00a0 an English reader with no knowledge of Japanese would be lost.\u00a0 But did I want this child to sound Japanese or French or Australian?\u00a0 Well, Japanese.\u00a0 Ok, so I should write either Okaasan or Mama.\u00a0 Yet, as I wrote Mama Mama Mama, my life’s experience continually prompted me:\u00a0 as a child and then a mother, the word was Mummy (except for one son!).\u00a0 So, at first, I wrote Mummy, then read the story into a recorder and listened to the playback as objectively as possible.\u00a0 It didn’t sound Japanese or French.\u00a0 But does it have to?\u00a0 For me, for this story, it does.\u00a0 I changed it to Mama and read it again into the recorder, played it back and liked it for its Frenchness and modern Japaneseness.\u00a0 Mama it is.<\/p>\n

A sidenote:\u00a0 I couldn’t have written this post, repeatedly typing ‘my mother died’, if my very own mother were alive!\u00a0 A second sidenote:\u00a0 On the day Mum died, I was doing some paid work for the French lecturer who had taught me Camus’ L’\u00e9tranger<\/em>, and I had to send him an email to say I needed time off for the funeral.\u00a0 I began the email, at first, with Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.\u00a0 Then I deleted it and wrote something less direct, less literary.\u00a0 Perhaps he thought of Camus, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mother died today. The Outsider, Albert Camus (trans. by Stuart Gilbert.\u00a0 Originally L’\u00e9tranger) ***** Yesterday (no. 14) I posted the first line from The Outsiders.\u00a0 With a final s.\u00a0 Different book, different author, but the same theme of a protagonist who feels like he’s outside of society.\u00a0 Like a misfit. Today’s post is about The … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “54 great opening lines: 15”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[290,291,292,293,2,246,21,226,3],"class_list":["post-3634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-54-great-opening-lines","tag-letranger-by-albert-camus","tag-origami-by-anne-bihan","tag-the-outsider-by-albert-camus","tag-albert-camus","tag-literature","tag-opening-lines","tag-postaday","tag-postaday2013","tag-translation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}