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Brad gave me permission to share his two–part question with the group if I felt it pertinent.

For the first part: I strongly concur:

I hold certification for teaching French in French from the Centre de recherche et d'étude pour la diffusion du français under the auspices of the École normale superieure de Saint-Cloud. Saint Cloud as the teacher-training school par excellence in France devoutly believed that French could only be taught by a native speaker trained in the instruction of his language. There had been a huge demand for French teachers, especially in Africa, at the time. Lacking sufficient native speakers trained in the instruction of French, the Center developed a program called Voix et Images de France based on 45 rpm records and filmstrips for use by specially trained non-native speakers. Madame Renard told our class that, if our students did not speak better French than we, the teachers, did, then we had failed to teach. The teacher should always correct by reference to the records. It was a fantastic program; however, it was too demanding for US schools. Before a school district could order the textbook, they had to agree to have trained teachers or a certified teacher trainer. Districts meeting the training requirements were few and far between. Spartanburg (SC) City Schools had the program and even Bonjour Line—the elementary school version of Voix et Images. League City, TX, had the program. I reviewed several districts who wanted the books but were unwilling to have their teachers trained and recommended none.

It was a disaster in universities that lacked language laboratories or that failed to require extensive laboratory work. I taught the program once at a university and in its prep school. At the end of two years, the prep school students had completed what a university student should have at the end of Sophomore French; the second year French students at the end of the two years of FL required for a B.A. had not completed the equivalent of one year of prep school French.

For the second part of your question: I am ambivalent, having read so many poor translations. On the other hand, I have read many French books in both English and French and found them well translated: not everything is like “The Celebrated Jumping Frog as clawed back into English from the French” by Mark Twain. I have even read a few good translations of French poetry. I have read excellent translations of Koine Greek. Although I read Russian (До́ктор Жива́го) before it was translated into English and Doctor Zhivago, my Russian skills were too inadequate to evaluate the translation. I have read Tirant lo Blanc in Catalan, Spanish, and English and found the Spanish and at least one of the English quite adequate. I used to have over a dozen copies of Le Petit Prince in different Romance languages (Gascon, Occitan, Catalan, Galician, Provencal, etc.) that I loved reading for comparison.

N. Scott Catledge, PhD/STD

Professor Emeritus

history & languages

From: Brad Johnston [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 8:08 AM
To: Scott xzCatledge
Subject: Latin influence

Do you agree that the student is well-advised to learn to speak from a teacher native to the foreign language but read the words of a translator native to his own language?