Friday, May 27, 2011

kool drum and French translation

I have quite enjoyed it, really…creating a website for the Kool drum project.

There are enough tools available for the enthusiastic amateur to make something pretty, and I hope I have.

The real difficulty was translating the whole kit and caboodle into French. Even with the help of Google translate and my very own nearly French children, it put up a bit of a fight…ongoing perhaps. The trouble is that I live in a world of French which is spoken rather than written in my everyday life. Unlike English, the gap between the two is “writ” large.

Although, having recently got stuck into Henry James and his Ambassadors, this is not always the case. Never was a man blessed with such deliciously long and tortuous sentences, such that you have to hunt for the meaning like a pig for a truffle. Anyway, I digress…

What has amazed and amused me about the French translation is the diversity of the responses of all of my French acquaintance that I have asked to cast an eye over it. They are all horribly over educated but still seem to have very different opinions about what is good written French. I expect they are all right…


If you want to put your oar in you can go and admire the daisies on my lawn at

www.kooldrum.com


post script 27 may...I have made the changes you suggested. Thanks to everyone for their help. I expect there are yet more mistakes still lurking...

8 comments:

Zhoen said...

On the first page, developped. One less P.

Rosie said...

my french is better than I thought, but in the wrong place...
thank you

anyone found any others!?

Jean said...

Very kool, klear website -congratulations and wishing the kooldrum much popularity and success!

Rosie said...

thanks jean, I can feel your good vibrations...

Amy said...

It's looking great! I only noticed one thing (because I'm a font fanatic) - every time you have the phrase "Kool drum", the word "drum" is in a different font (courier vs arial maybe) You also use a capital K but only sometimes. Not such a big deal, but it made me think, what with your nice kool drum logo maybe you could insert that logo as a picture every time you use the words kool drum - it will pop out and keep that idea in people's minds! Or if that's too much trouble, maybe just a yellow, slightly different font, but always with the lower case k.

I also thought (sorry, once I get going it's hard to stop!) maybe your header "handcrafted etc..." could be made more of - the recycled gas bottle angle is unique and interesting but I didn't notice it until I'd been up and down the page. A bigger font or centered?

But you've done a wonderful job. Good luck with it, Rosie.

Rosie said...

now that is interesting amy...in my web browser it always shows up in the same special font that we use for the logo ...'toontimes' although it is more than possible that sometimes I havent noticed the capital (they dont differ too much in that font) perhaps I need to embed my fonts in some way.I wonder why you arent seeing them?
I'll have to go look on solme other computers...all the ones in my house have that font in windows.
thanks by the way, and feel free to go on as much as you like...I do!

Zhoen said...

Rosie,
I wouldn't have minded if you'd just deleted my comment, you know.

Rosie said...

zhoen, as if I would delete one of your comments!I am already impressed that you read a site which has pale font on a dark background, which I remember you saying that you find a strain...