Les Traductions Faibles : Fabulous Translations
A trip to Toulouse, France, for the 20th Anniversary meeting
of CERFACS inspired this poem ... keeping in my traditional habit
of merrily mangling the French language. For example, once while in a
park in Toulouse, I wanted to say in French "I have a kite with 2
strings but I need the wind", but what came out, completely
accidentally, was "I have a slow brain with 2 girls but I need the wine".
That's a true story.
My French friends and colleagues were very patient with me in helping
me learn French during my post-doc at CERFACS in 1989-1990. I'd like
to return the favor with a French lesson of my own. Recall that "logos"
is Greek for "word", and the root of "logic".
Les Traductions Faibles : Fabulous Translations, by Tim Davis
Une leçon francaise, et de logiciel
Lessen my French; I'll eat my words.
Or in plain language to my ear,
I shall reduce each word, I fear,
from French to mangled English here,
first word-for-word then sentence clear.
Nous créons bien des théories de math :
No cryin' band-aids for theories of math.
Which is to say in English clear,
my theory of math has lemmas unclear;
no quick fix here; I shed a tear.
My journal paper won't pass my peer.
Nous sommes heureuses d'être a Toulouse :
your sum's a ruse, a debt to lose.
Your math's a mess, your sum's obtuse,
your lemmas are lost, you've nothing to lose,
but in your proof, some miracle use,
or yet another method choose.
CERFACS est une place pour les logiciels math :
Sure, facts have their *place* in the logic of math.
In other words, that is to say,
mathematical code with truth it can play.
If your code has a bug that is here to stay,
just call it a fact, or a feature, OK?
Pour matrice creuse, nos codes sont vites :
poor me, tries we cruise, no codes sound fit.
Alas I've cruised this road before,
my code once more has dumped its core,
My sorry attempts I'll try once more,
to fix my code until I'm sore.
Nous vous souhaitons un bon voyage :
Don't sweat it now, just clear out of town.
My poems of math and matrices sparse
encited them all to shout 'til they're hoarse.
I'd better clear out and mount up my horse,
and ride out of town; just don't be too harsh.
In case you don't know French, here are the true translations:
Une leçon francaise, et de logiciel
A lesson in French, and software.
Nous créons bien des théories de math :
We're good at creating math methories.
Nous sommes heureuses d'être a Toulouse :
We are happy to be in Toulouse (feminine form).
CERFACS est une place pour les logiciels math :
CERFACS is a place for mathematical software.
Pour matrice creuse, nos codes sont vites :
For sparse matrices, our codes "are" fast (should be "vont")
Nous vous souhaitons un bon voyage :
We hope you have a great trip.
Copyright 2007,
Tim Davis. Please don't copy-and-paste or hot-link
this poem without permission; link to this page instead:
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~davis/Poetry/traductions.html
If you like this poem, you can find more poems at
Horror Matrices and Other Mathematical Poetry.
Click here
for an index of my serious poetry.