French Kiss

[Guest Dabeagle]

French Kiss may be more fun if you understand French, but I don't understand a lick of it and I thought it was great.

I'm reminded of when I was ten or eleven and my mother had some Italian friends. Their nephew, Alessandro, came to visit. We didn't understand each other but we had a grand time and played hours of Stratego. I learned my numbers in Italian doing that, and I can still see his face light up and say 'Bomba!' every time I ran into a bomb.

A quick, sweet read - give it a try!

[Lugnutz]

I remember reading this a couple months ago. Nice story. All you need is a common language.

[Guest RBartlett]

French Kiss may be more fun if you understand French, but I don't understand a lick of it and I thought it was great.

I'm reminded of when I was ten or eleven and my mother had some Italian friends. Their nephew, Alessandro, came to visit. We didn't understand each other but we had a grand time and played hours of Stratego. I learned my numbers in Italian doing that, and I can still see his face light up and say 'Bomba!' every time I ran into a bomb.

A quick, sweet read - give it a tr

I'm rather glad you don't understand French because mine is terrible and I'm sure I made Luc sound like an idiot in his native tongue. That said, I figured the not knowing sort of put the reader in the same boat as Jason. I'm glad you enjoyed it, this is one of my favorite short stories.

[JamesSavik]

The French was Greek to me but the sweetness of the story came through loud and clear.

[Lugnutz]

Google translate does a fine job.

[Nick Deverill]

It's a nice story. My French is a bit light, but I understood enough not to need to look things up.

[Merkin]

Who needs spoken language when the eyes are windows to the soul?

[Bruin Fisher]

LOVELY STORY.

[Rutabaga]

It is a delightful story. I speak French fluently, and there are definitely some issues in the French in the story. Some of them come from transliteration errors inevitable with software translation programs, where the translated meaning is incorrect in the circumstances. Another issue, and the main one for me, is that no teenager would use the formal "vous" form of address with another teenager, especially one they want to become friends with. They would use the informal "tu" form. And there are other areas where idiomatic French would differ and not have a direct English counterpart.

But it doesn't detract from the story, even with the realization that it is improbable that a French teenager in Paris wouldn't know some English since English is routinely taught in high school and kids pick up on a lot of American culture (movies, music, and TV), along with the improbability that an American kid spending months in Paris each summer would not have picked up many bits and pieces of French despite himself. The premise works within the reality of the story.

Should anyone ever desire to include French within one of their stories, I would be happy to offer consulting services on how to say things appropriately.

R

[Cole Parker]

That's a great offer, Root. I'm much more likely to include Spanish in a story than French, but I now know where to go if I need to. That's always a concern when using a language we don't understand. We don't want practitioners of the second language laughing their heads off with what we've written.

C

[Nick Deverill]

Lurking on my bookshelf is a story set in the 20s, perhaps written in the 30s that is crying out for a film since the plot is so good. I've never suggested it when I had contacts, partly because I think it could easily be done badly and is crying out for a good treatment.

The story lends itself admirably to being in both English and Spanish, especially since part of the plot hinges on some folk not understanding the language they don't speak. From memory, the plot is 100% hetero, but there is no sex in it anyway, nor should any be put in as it would make a good film for kids. The only bit I'd change is I'd make the young Spanish speaker who most of the plot involves, a little bit cleverer since the ending would be streets better if he was shown to be manipulating people, but letting his wife think she was!

I'm convinced any film has to be a proper dual language production, where as a DVD release, you could choose subtitles in English, Spanish, turn them off if you spoke both languages and if you are deaf - subtitles of both languages.