Facebook Goes French: A Dream Come True or… a Nightmare?

All of you know by now how sensitive I am to bad translation… Actually I am very picky when it comes to written expression! Unfortunately, I am the witness of awful texts on a daily basis…

A couple of months ago I joined Facebook after having received an invitation from my 11 year old niece… Over the years, I had been invited numerous times but  always had ignored those requests to sign up. Since I am a real sucker when anything involves my niece and cannot refuse her anything, I did join the wonderful world of FB… and I thought I could monitor who her friends were (being a real mother hen, I was kind of skeptical and truly believed she needed to be supervised… in a subtle way of course!)… It did not take long before her brother asked me to become his friend also… I was less concerned about him: he is going on 18 and, from what I see, Facebook is the new way for high schoolers (and mature adults!) to goof around… back in my days, we were doing it on the school grounds (which I think was much more fun since we were physically together!)… what makes me wonder… what do they do during recess in school now? Good question!…

Anyways, though I am not proud of being a Facebook member, I am… for better or worse! Besides my brother’s kids, I only have six friends… and I really do not intend to add more. I have to admit that I like FB for one thing: now that I am connected with my friends and family who live in Chicago, St.Maarten, Portland, Timmins and Senneterre ; we do not have to send each other pics… we only have to log in our FB account and we can see them all… But, other than that, I personally get no benefits from this social network.

Now that I tried to justify my move (did I convince any of you? )… I want to talk about Facebook French version…

A few days before Christmas, my FB account has been arbitrarily and automatically switched to the brand new French version (I am still searching for how to go back to English… and I think I can do it!)… Why? I only can assume that it was decided upon my name and country… I cannot fool anyone, my surname is really French! I guess that, without the Des, this change would have never occurred… because I would then have been Lyne Roberts… unless my first name would have still been questionable… Lynne or Lynn would have convinced the system I was genuinely anglophone! So… add up Canada to Lyne Des Roberts and you have a perfect match for your account to be translated!!!

I will have to ask my cousin Michelle Des Roberts who lives in Portland, Maine whether her account was turned into French or left alone… you see… Michelle does not speak French and barely understands it! At the beginning of the 20th Century, one of the Des Roberts‘ brothers emigrated to the States… there is now quite a large number of Des Roberts  mainly living in Boston, Portland and New Hampshire… and a few others can be found throughout the United States. If my generation and the ones before can still speak French, Michelle’s generation cannot! Yet, because she is located in the States, perhaps the system did not pick her name the way it did in my case.

Saturday, I logged in my account to have a closer look at Facebook French version… at first glance, it seemed okay!… well… only okay!!! Nothing to brag about, that is for sure! As for the IT terminology itself, it is what is used worldwide… not great, but not incorrect either! It is when I started to read the translated fucntions that I realized how bad it was!

I would not be surprised to hear that it went through Google Free Translator (my favourite!)… when a word (or expression) is not translated literaly, it stays in English!… Therefore you have things like these: envoyer un poke à… (send a poke to)… what, in the name of God, is un poke? Poke in French is une poussée, un coup de coude or un coup du bout du doigt… certainly not un poke!!!… marquer cette photo (tag this photo) and John Doe doit approuver ce marquage… What in the hell?

It is impossible for me to give you an exhaustive list of all the flaws because this post would become a book! Here are a few good ones though:

• Se souvenir de moi (remember me)… Only people se souviennent, not computers!
• Informations (information)… What about renseignements? Les informations, in French,  are the news!
• Plus de publicités (more ads)… Sorry but we cannot count publicité in French… and if we want to, we use annonces instead!
• Notifications (notifications)… This is not a word in French! What about using the word messages? Too simple perhaps…
• Est devenu(e) fan de (became a fan of)… I am now speechless!
• Lycée (high school)… My French version of FB is the Canadian one (so I was notified!)… Last time I checked, we still did not have lycées around here! We only have old plain écoles secondaires!

I will never say this often enough: translation is not the mere process of checking words in an English-French dictionary! There are nuances… cultural differences… different humor… what makes me laugh in English rarely makes me laugh once it is translated in French! And vice-versa… Comical movies in English are not funny at all in their French version!

Translating thoughts and ideas in another language takes lots of imagination… and, if poking someone in English does mean something, it does not in French… therefore, sit down and find something else that will ring a bell for Francophones! Of course, it will cost more $$$… because this type of translators do not bill by the word count!…

One would think that a huge corporation such as Facebook would pay more attention to the translation of its site… was it left to the users? If so, I am not surprised with the results… on the other hand, if professionals handled this task… well… they suck big time!

As for me, I will click on the button English US (hopefully it will work!) so I will return to a language I do understand: Plain English!!!

“I do not avoid confusion… I create it!”

Confucius