Back in June I saw my first Chadian movie (see this post); now I’ve seen another by the same director, Mahamat Saleh Haroun, called Bye Bye Africa (available at Criterion Channel until the end of October). His first feature film, it was released in 1999 but apparently shot in 1997 (judging from a reference to its being the tenth anniversary of the death of Thomas Sankara); it’s a little rough around the edges (sound and image poorly coordinated, subtitles not ready for prime time when they show up — annoyingly long stretches of both French and Chadian Arabic go untranslated), but it’s thoughtful, vigorous, and interesting throughout, and it’s great to see so much of N’Djamena. (Also, I got to learn the French titles of some popular movies that show up on posters — Contre-attaque is First Strike and Six hommes pour sauver Harry is Let’s Get Harry — and it was satisfying to learn that the plural of Arabic فِلْم film is فْلَام ʔaflām.)
But about those subtitles…. I noticed a number of infelicities, but this one really got my goat. Much of the movie deals with the difficulty of keeping a cinema industry going in Chad, and at one point someone is explaining why it’s hard to get people to theaters: “Il y a tellement de télévisions, de magnétoscopes, de cassettes, et surtout les paraboles.” The subtitle read: “There are so many TV sets, tape recorders, cassettes, and parabolas galore.” Setting aside the misleading “tape recorders” (a magnétoscope is a VCR, which, yes, is literally a tape recorder, but that’s not how we use the phrase) and the ridiculous “galore,” I have to focus on the final item in the list. The word parabole can of course mean ‘parabola,’ but it has another meaning, ‘satellite dish,’ and I think it’s pretty clear which fits this context. I know it’s hard work subtitling movies, and doubtless especially ill-paid in cases like this, but come on, when the error is so blatant even a harried scrivener should realize something is amiss.
“Parabolas galore” is the sort of beautiful found-poetry phrase you are unlikely to ever get except via incompetent translation. So savor it, don’t condemn it!
Separately, I have the honor to be a graduate of what is almost certainly the only public high school in the United States where virtually every graduate, in a certain chronological cohort, knew something about the various post-independence travails of Chad. In those far-off hazy-crazy days, curriculum decisions were made extremely locally – sometimes at the building level not even the school district level, and our high school required every eleventh-grader not excused for some special reason to take a semester of International Relations. Which is already very weird, but the reason we had that requirement is because the late Mr. Smith (Wayne S. Smith, 1937-2017) had pushed for it, and he then personally taught all the sections of 11th grade International Relations (with enough time left over in his schedule to also teach e.g. 12th grade electives in Political Science and AP European History). And Mr. Smith believed in teaching IR with memorable illustrative examples. So everyone who took his class learned about Chad, and everyone learned about the 1969 Soccer War (“Guerra de futbol”) between El Salvador and Honduras. This included the kids who were not headed for college, etc. We did not at the time, I fear, appreciate how distinctive and cosmopolitan an education our random generic suburban public high school was offering us in this regard as a result of one man’s idiosyncrasies and ability to work the system to his advantage.
I knew a Brit couple who used to work in Chad. It sounded pretty grim, although they were stoical about it. Made me glad I’d only worked in much nicer places in West Africa (especially Ghana, which has much to recommend it.)
Still, one of the many humbling things I learnt in West Africa is that it’s full of people who are amazingly good at coping. Satellite dishes and all.
Wayne Smith sounds worthy of his honourable mention.
It’s about time LH got a conics section.
This reminds me of our class clown from when I was about fourteen, who memorably asked the maths teacher: “Please, Sir! What’s a parabolics?”
At the end of this song (in Russian) there is a mention of a nonexistent object Lobachevsky’s parabola.
IMHO, Scherbakov is the best poet of his (that is ours) generation.
Also, “surtout” means “especially”/”most importantly” rather than “galore”.
“Above all parabolas” is a prog rock eponymous album.
“VCR” was American; though by 1999 it was well understood in In Ireland, “video cassette recorder” was still usually abbreviated “video”, just as “television” was to a lesser extent “telly” rather than “TV”. Illustrative of dialect differences in relative preferences for initialism vs clipping.
Does “cassettes” mean the cassettes themselves, or cassette recorders?
Audio cassette recorders were magnétophones. Camcorder was (is) caméscope.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that when characters were lamenting the fates of the movie theaters they had frequented in their youth, one of them said that the such-and-such theater had become a hôtel de passe. The subtitle rendered this simply as “hotel,” which, again, is not literally wrong but leaves out an essential element (for the non-francophones among us, it is a hotel that specializes in prostitution).
Wayne Smith sounds worthy of his honourable mention.
Wayne Smith.
The mother of a friend once recommended a local hotel in her neighborhood of Mexico City. First odd thing we noticed was that each of the parking spots had a door that could block view of the car. There was a guy outside as we pulled in who asked how long we wanted to stay and looked askance when we said one night, explaining he meant in hours, then said Es un hotel de paso. Our friend’s mother was scandalized and initially insisted I must have misunderstood, till I said it wasn’t like I’d heard the phrase hotel de paso before so I could hardly have made it up.
Do such things exist in the US — hotels that are open about helping you keep your upscale affair a secret? I’m not so naive as to think they don’t happen, and I once saw a hotel in a rundown neighborhood that offered “nap rates” but I’ve never seen nor heard of a place that would keep your license plate secret.
The expression “no-tell motel” must have come from someplace.
When I first came to France it took me a while to work out what K7s were.
Do such things exist in the US — hotels that are open about helping you keep your upscale affair a secret?
Yes. When I was a teen—1960s—they were called no-tells.
We did not at the time, I fear, appreciate how distinctive and cosmopolitan an education our random generic suburban public high school was offering us
Most decent public schools end up providing some distinctive knowledge that no one in the rest of the country seems to have. In the 8th grade in my village in New Hampshire we did a report on Paraguay, for some reason. And to this day I am convinced I know far more about the War of the Triple Alliance, Guarani and Alfredo Stroessner than 99.5% of my fellow citizens.
When I first came to France it took me a while to work out what K7s were.
Hah! That’s a new one on me; thanks.
Re “no-tell,” what was long famed as “the highest-rated romantic short stay hotel in NYC” fell victim to gentrification and redevelopment a few years back, but someone or other has a memorial website for it. https://libertyinnnyc.com/
I have never heard any concise term for “place that rents rooms by the hour”. I don’t imagine Ireland has been a fertile ground for such establishments, but maybe that’s just my sheltered upbringing.