{"id":9546,"date":"2012-12-25T12:28:58","date_gmt":"2012-12-25T16:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=9546"},"modified":"2012-12-25T12:28:58","modified_gmt":"2012-12-25T16:28:58","slug":"puzzled-translators-merry-xmas-wishes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/puzzled-translators-merry-xmas-wishes\/","title":{"rendered":"Puzzled Translator&#8217;s Merry Xmas Wishes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Good friend <strong>Hamid Tibouchi<\/strong>, that excellent Algerian poet & painter, (see pp 604ff in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/reader\/0520273850\/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link\">Poems for the Millennium 4)<\/a>\u00a0just sent a lovely Xmas card that started with a very funny\/sage quote \u2014 for which I\u2019m having trouble finding a perfect translation. Here it is:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0__________________________________<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00ab Puisque le bonheur n\u2019existe pas,<br \/>\nt\u00e2chons d\u2019\u00eatre heureux sans lui. \u00bb<\/p>\n<p>Ernst Moerman, 1897-1944<br \/>\n[\u00c9crivain et cin\u00e9aste belge]<\/p>\n<p>_________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Translated it will say \u201cGiven that happiness doesn\u2019t exist \/ let\u2019s do our best to be happy without it.\u201d The original works better because there are two French words for happyness\/happy: \u201cbonheur\u201d as noun, and \u201cheureux\u201d as adjective. Even if an etymological link exists, the words are different enough on the surface to suggest two unconnected concepts of happiness\/being happy while keeping that rhyming bi-vowel \u201ceu\u201d going. I guess I could replace \u201chappy\u201d with what the dictionary gives as synonymes:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">cheerful, cheery, merry, joyful, jovial, jolly, jocular, gleeful, carefree, untroubled, delighted, smiling, beaming, grinning, in good spirits, in a good mood, lighthearted, pleased, contented, content, satisfied, gratified, buoyant, radiant, sunny, blithe, joyous, beatific; thrilled, elated, exhilarated, ecstatic, blissful, euphoric, overjoyed, exultant, rapturous, in seventh heaven, on cloud nine, walking on air, jumping for joy, jubilant; chirpy, over the moon, on top of the world, tickled pink, on a high, as happy as a clam; jocund\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Pick whatever you find fitting for the day; \u00a0it is my <strong>bonheur<\/strong> this morning to play in the happy hunting grounds of word upon word upon word\u2026\u00a0and so on this occasion I\u2019ll translate Moerman\u2019s\u00a0quip\u00a0as:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0__________________________________<\/p>\n<p>\u00ab Given that happiness doesn\u2019t exist,<br \/>\nlet\u2019s do our best to make merry without it. \u00bb<\/p>\n<p>Ernst Moerman, 1897-1944<br \/>\n[\u00c9crivain et cin\u00e9aste belge]<\/p>\n<p>__________________________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good friend Hamid Tibouchi, that excellent Algerian poet &#038; painter, (see pp 604ff in Poems for the Millennium 4)\u00a0just sent a lovely Xmas card that started with a very funny\/sage quote \u2014 for which&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,1],"tags":[1327,375],"class_list":["post-9546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation","category-uncategorized","tag-ernst-moerman","tag-hamid-tibouchi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9546"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9558,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9546\/revisions\/9558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}