It has been a long week, and tomorrow is looking just as long, but it’s been a beautiful Sunday that I plan to cap off with the new videos from the French train nerd YouTube channels I subscribe to and maybe even some Stardew Valley.

Thanks largely to traveling, I powered through my first Franco-Ontarian novel over the past few days, and it was delightful. Some of the best Francophone books I’ve read have been purchased used for about $5, so hooray for used bookstores.

Adding this to my to-read list.

I have just learned that “leapfrog” is called “leapsheep” (« saute-mouton ») in French AND that, by extension, a “sheep-leap” (« saut-de-mouton ») is the name for a particular kind of railway junction. Don’t know which delights me more.

I have twice bought a Francophone book based on the title, and both were winners. « Vers Saint-Gétorix » was as enjoyable as the pun, and « Kiffe kiffe demain » delivered on its promise of a story from la banlieue.

Looking back, I owe a lot to the semester I took both “Intro to CS” and “History of French,” which culminated in writing a Java program to help with a “invent your own Romance language” group final.

I learned today that “The Handmaid’s Tale” is « La servante écarlate » in French, which provokes a lot of thoughts about translation.

Sometimes I don’t realize how ridiculous a phrase in English is until I’ve heard its literal translation into French. The first time I heard Bugs Bunny’s catchphrase as « quoi de neuf, docteur ? », it felt like my world was being turned upside down.

I hear Italian PM Giuseppe Conte’s name fairly often on Francophone radio, but I nearly always hear it first as José Piquanté and then fix it in post.

TIL that Star Trek’s “warp speed” is translated as the vastly inferior “distortion” in French and that at least one French news outlet has therefore adopted the translation “Operation Lightning Speed” for the U.S. vaccine effort.

Ça fait plusieurs mois que je fais (presque) tout sur mon smartphone en français, mais aujourd’hui, je me suis demandé pour la première fois si je préfère être tutoyé ou vouvoyé par une machine.

This afternoon, a career in academia looks like working from the kitchen table, playing a French 80s radio station, and fuming at Reviewer B’s complaints about my using the journal’s template like I was asked to.

One of the greatest joys I experience as a veteran of a decade of French classes is whenever I discover that a song we used to listen to in high school is an actual song, not just something made up for class.

Highlight of the morning: Hearing a translator for the interviewee on a France Culture show about comics struggle to remember the French neologism for “spoiler.”

I cannot read the word “poignant” without remembering that it is etymologically related to the French word for “fist” and, by extension, to the French expressions for “punch” and “brass knuckles” (literally, “an American punch”).

Unexpected topics in research meetings: The difficulty of choosing English translations for French swearing in your data.

As a big fan of both The Good Place and the French language, I suddenly feel an urgent need to know what substitutes Chidi hears in French when Eleanor tries to swear in English.

I have been getting emails incorrectly calling me “Dr.” or “Professor” since I was an undergrad with my own section of French 102. Now, it’s nice to get one of those and be able to suppress the instinct to correct the sender.

Have not made as much writing progress today as I’d like, but today’s progress has validated both my use of a structured folder system as a “reference manager” AND my decision to memorize the keyboard shortcut for French guillemets.

It’s amazing how much French I’m learning translating students’ tweets to English for a research project. Language is so rich, and limiting it to 280 characters arguably makes it more so.

Lexington has a sister city in Normandy, so I’m currently applying to our sister cities organization in the hopes it will provide opportunities to keep up my French. 😊🇫🇷

Over lunch, I continued a new (for me) book on the history of French and decided to email a thank you to a wonderful BYU professor who taught a class on that subject. I think of him often and am embarrassed I hadn’t reached out earlier.