About using French language
By Philippe Rouillé
Paris, Nov 30th 1996
Bonjour Joyce Brite,
You write good French. Thank you very much.
Sorry I could not answer sooner your nice message in the MMD digest (96.11.16), but, after I sent a flamer on 96.11.14 about ignorance of France amidst English-speaking people, my hard disk crashed ... (mon disque dur s'est planté). Everything went wrong for me during these last few weeks. Even the caddie I used to carry my computer to the repairer lost a wheel.
It was never my intention to hurt anybody's feelings in this "flamer", and if that was the case, I humbly apologize. (Actually I finally got a nice correspondance with several people, amidst them Robbie Rhodes of course, and Jan Kijlstra).
Here are some equivalents to the words you were mentionning in the MMD (96.11.16) digest:
player piano = pianola (!) or piano pneumatique, or the different maker's names (such as: Autopleyela).
(Piano-player would be translated by Push-up ... instead of: appareil pneumatique reproducteur a poser devant un piano)
Music box = boite a musique (with accents: boîte à musique)
computer = ordinateur
hard drive = disque dur (But a Floppy disc = une disquette)
software = logiciel
home page = page d'accueil (or page personnelle)
Internet = Internet
Modem = Modem (modulateur-demodulateur)(démodulateur)
Memory (au computer) = Memoire (Mémoire) (memoire vive, memoire morte, memoire virtuelle)
To have the accents on the e-mail, some encoding is necessary, but sorry, I am no technician. Jody explained that last year in a digest, if I remember well. And think about frustrated Japanese people who are trying to get their caracters in ASCII.
We got in France some official regulations to protect the French language about invasions from outside (from where ? I wonder). Sometimes, it becomes surrealistic: lastly, it was asked to replace in French the word CD-ROM by cédérom in one word (cederom). Of course, nobody uses this last word. These changes in spelling are a general nuisance when you try to look for a word in a data-base (base de données).
I hope I am not actually so mind-blinded about the use of French language: with the museum of CNAM in Paris (Musee des Arts et Metiers), I built last August a Web site on Mechanical Music, which I try to maintain in 3 languages: French, English and German. I know that there are some mistakes in the 2 last languages ... but I really wanted to put on the Web a good listing of the museums in Europe, the various MM associations in the world, and some links. I updated some information recently, but it needs some more work ... and more images and sound.
The web address of this site is:
http://www.cnam.fr/museum/
Then click on Musica Mecanica
The complete home-page address is:
http://www.cnam.fr/museum/musica-mecanica/musica-index.html
Best regards,
Philippe Rouille
(Paris, France) |
(Message sent Sat 30 Nov 1996, 19:05:27 GMT, from time zone GMT+0100.) |
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