Public lecture by Mr. Jean Pruvost
“The adventure of the words of the French Language: archaisms, neologisms, etymology and challenges of translation”
Wednesday, February 24th - 11:45 am
Collège Universitaire de Saint-Boniface
Room 2445
(200 de la Cathédrale Avenue - Saint-Boniface)
Free entrance
A snack will be offer at 11:45 am
Lecture in French
The lecturer
Jean Pruvost is a professor at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, where he teaches lexicology and lexicography, and manages a Masters in Language Science program and a CNRS language laboratory, Metade (Computer Dictionaries Lexicons), devoted to dictionaries. Each year, he organizes the annual Dictionary Day, the international conference for lexicologists and lexicographers.
Author of over 340 publications including Que sais-je?, he received the Logos International Language Prize for Dictionnaires et nouvelles technologies (PUF) in 2000, and an Académie française Prize for Les Dictionnaires français, outils d’une langue et d’une culture (Ophrys) in 2007.
He edits and writes dictionaries for Bordas and, in particular, has published a Dictionnaire de citations de la langue française (2007) with Bordas, a Dictionnaire du Japon (2007) and a Dictionnaire de la Chine (2008) with Éditions des Silves.
A member of the Institute of French Language, of the National Council of Universities, and of various editorial boards of international journals, editor-in-chief of Studies in Applied Linguistics (Didier erudition), he manages scholarly collections with B. Quemada at Éditions Honore Champion and co-led Les Cahiers de lexicologie.
Since 2007, he is director of a high-level international electronic journal on words and dictionaries (www.dicorevue.fr).
The lecture
“The adventure of the French Language: archaisms, neologisms, etymology and challenges of translation”
A language lives and develops only if it suits the needs of a language group. The economic, scientific, technical and industrial evolution of this community, its cultural transformations, sometimes require the construction of new words (computer, office, cat, email), sometimes a change of meaning, occasionally radical (in the 19th century, “enerver” in French was to be soft, “without nerves”) or the addition of new meaning to an existing word (the computer mouse).
Literature most often gives rise to words that do not enter into common use, but show the richness of expression of a language. It also maintains the memory of yesterday’s words, no longer in use, except in the evocation of past works and the occasional ironic usage. It is inevitable that the words disappear while others are born, and thousands of new words that are, for example, registered annually at the National Institute of Industrial Property.
The language also has its strata according to age and medium. It is natural for a teenager to forges words that seem to him to mark his territory, that he hopes is different from adults. Finally, advertising annually invents a great number of words and phrases that settle in the public’s minds. All this is part of the history of language, the history of words, their etymology.
Translating is a very difficult exercise. One must, indeed, perfectly master the mechanics of creation of each language, and take accurate measure of cultural differences, finding ways to cope with them. How to translate “il a 14 en philo au bac”, without going through the history of the words and of the context of civilization?
Link to Jean Pruvost’s interview on the five academies of the Institut de France radio (Canal Academie): http://www.canalacademie.com/Des-outils-essentiels-les.html
“This lecture is organized by la Délégation Générale de l’Alliance Française aux Etats-Unis, in partnership with the Radio des cinq académies de l’Institut de France (Canal Académie)”
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