What language est-ce que I parle?

If I haven't mentioned it already, translation is one of my passions. It's kind of a geeky thing to get excited about, I know, but I can't help it - it really is an absolutely fascinating process, and one that I love diving into because it gets my brain working. It's both creative and analytical, similar to music (or at least its composition), which is probably a big part of the reason it appeals to me.

In the most literal - and boring - sense, translation is just the substitution of one word for another that means the same thing in a different language. That's what I thought I was getting myself into when I found out I had to take English to French Translation the second semester of my year abroad, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

Yes, you're taking words from one language and putting them into another, but finding the right ones and the right way to put them together is about a lot more than just individual words: idiomatic expressions, sector-specific phrases ("valeur" means "value," but in a business sense there are several other possible meanings as well) and most importantly, the author's voice. Someone reading a translation shouldn't know it is one, and often doesn't, if the translator has done a good job, unless they happen to glance at the title page and see that little "Translated By." Just as everyone has their own unique voice when they talk - distinguished by things like phrasing, emphasis and often-used expressions - authors have one when they write, and it's a translator's job to figure out how to bring that voice to life in the target language (that's translator/interpreter-speak for the language they're translating/interpreting into).

But I'm digressing from what I actually wanted to talk about (how unusual!)...

I'm in the middle of my first big freelance translation project, and between reading in French while typing in English and thinking back and forth between the two, my brain keeps slipping up and forgetting there's a difference when I'm not in translation mode. I'll be sitting in a meeting at work, talking about First Amendment rights, and all of a sudden I can't think of any word for "rights" except "droits," which is the French. Of course I know what the word means in both languages, concept-wise, but I just can't find the English word in my head. It's a little disconcerting!

My first experience with this internal mélange of words was during my year abroad, although it started more with an internal vocabulary black hole. About halfway through my first semester in France, my friends and I would be talking (in French - it was an immersive program and we'd all signed a contract agreeing to speak French 100% of our time there), and one of us would come to a stuttering halt mid-sentence. It was what I started calling "l'espace vide" - the empty space, the void - between English and French. And it's frustrating - you know exactly what you mean, and can define the word you're looking for in both languages, but the actual word for it in either one has momentarily vanished from your head.

A couple of weeks after the beginning of second semester, I was walking back to my host family's apartment from the Saturday market, and suddenly realized I had no idea which language I was thinking in. When I focused - cautiously! after all, who knew what was going on in there? - I thought it seemed like a sort of mental double-speak: both languages running through my mind simultaneously, or in very quick echoes of each other, and the conscious part of my brain not entirely sure which was louder. After that is when the mental word substitution started - I'd be talking, thinking or writing as usual, and all of a sudden there'd be a word in my head in the wrong language, acting as a mental roadblock for a minute.

It usually happens when I'm talking about a concept in the language I didn't learn it in. Anything involving wine almost always comes to my head in French first, because the first wine-tasting class I took was in France, so I learned to talk about it in French. Certain words also seem to me to sound more like what they mean, as far as connotations go, in one language or the other. "Awkward," for instance, works so much better in English, because the word itself is awkward, by sound as well as definition. "Maladroit" or "gênant" ...technically they mean the same thing, but they don't feel like the definition the way the English does. "Soulagement" is one I've been having issues finding the English for lately, because to me, the French embodies the full concept - of relief, ease, solace, comfort - better than any one English word does.

It's a peculiar problem to have, but since it makes me think I don't really mind. I do sometimes wish I spoke a third language fluently - the mental gymnastics would probably be exhausting, but I'm curious as to what it sounds like inside a trilingual person's head!

So if you're talking to me and I stop mid-sentence and get a confused and/or frustrated look on my face, bear with me or ask me for the definition so you can tell me what word has escaped me. And if you're curious, ask me what it is in French!