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One of the books I'm reading right now is Anne Crignon's Une belle grève de femmes: Les Penn Sardin, Douarnenez 1924 (A women's strike: The Penn sardin [1], Douarnenez, 1924). I'm two-thirds of the way through and it has been really good book so far.
[1] "Penn sardin" is Breton for "sardine head"; it's the name of the headdress for women of Douarnenez and, by extension those same women.
There is one thing, though. Because of the time/place the book is set in (Brittany, 1920s) the book occasionally uses Breton -- the dominant language in that era/area -- to transcribe the exact words of slogans, songs, announcements, etc. Now. I speak a little Breton. A very little Breton, but enough to know that "Pemp real a vo" did not translate directly to "twenty-five sous per hour" -- "pemp" means five, not twenty-five. It bugged me enough that I eventually went and got my Breton-French dictionnary: a "real" is worth five sous. A literal translation would be "Five five-sous we'll get" (the "per hour" is implied).
There was another moment where I also had to fetch the dictionnary because I got tripped up by sentence structure in the Breton vs the French translation. So I would appreciate literal translations as well as accurate ones -- though possibly this is mostly because or where my language skills are: were I better or worse, I'm not sure I would have cared or noticed.
What is your preference for in-text translations? Literal, accurate, both? A secret other option?
[1] "Penn sardin" is Breton for "sardine head"; it's the name of the headdress for women of Douarnenez and, by extension those same women.
There is one thing, though. Because of the time/place the book is set in (Brittany, 1920s) the book occasionally uses Breton -- the dominant language in that era/area -- to transcribe the exact words of slogans, songs, announcements, etc. Now. I speak a little Breton. A very little Breton, but enough to know that "Pemp real a vo" did not translate directly to "twenty-five sous per hour" -- "pemp" means five, not twenty-five. It bugged me enough that I eventually went and got my Breton-French dictionnary: a "real" is worth five sous. A literal translation would be "Five five-sous we'll get" (the "per hour" is implied).
There was another moment where I also had to fetch the dictionnary because I got tripped up by sentence structure in the Breton vs the French translation. So I would appreciate literal translations as well as accurate ones -- though possibly this is mostly because or where my language skills are: were I better or worse, I'm not sure I would have cared or noticed.
What is your preference for in-text translations? Literal, accurate, both? A secret other option?