Morning Translations

I was a boy in Montreal, the largest city in the French-speaking province of Canada. However, it was the time of two solitudes in which the English did their thing and the French did theirs. Living in English was very easy, and young AC and everyone he knew were unilingual. Too bad, but that it the way the it was.

There were three English elementary schools fairly close to where I lived, and in 1960, they built a new English high school for me and all of the baby boomers as we began to enter that phase of our lives. A year later, they built another English high school for my friends who lived on the other side of the imaginary school border. That is where my closest friends went.

Even though we took French in school from grade 3 onward, it was just a subject, and I didn't become very adept. In fact, when I transferred to school in Ontario at the age of 15, I found they were ahead of me in some ways, certainly in reading. This was the case, even though, at that time, they didn't start French until grade 9 or maybe senior elementary.

Of course, that late start in Ontario hasn't been the case for a long time, and most schools and boards also have a form of French immersion from first grade and onward for those who desire it. My grandkids continue to take some subjects en francias, even in senior high school.

I also hasten to add that by the time I started teaching, 10 yeas after I left Montreal, English kids who moved to Southwestern Ontario from Montreal could speak French very well.

I have been sorry to not have learned Canada's other official language better. I did have the notion to makes amends in retirement. I remember signing into Duolingo, but the problem was that my hearing was compromised enough by then that I could not pick up the nuances of pronunciation. I soon threw in the towel, right after throwing my hands up in despair.

Even though I moved away more than sixty years ago, my favourite hockey team is still the Montreal Canadiens. I almost bleed the bleu, bland et rouge (their colours). In fact, the Canadiens (or Habs, as in habitants) are now my only sports interest at all in all sports. I guess tennis is an exception, but it isn't a team sport, and I cannot follow it in the same way.

There is very decent coverage of the Canadiens in English. I can watch the games and read many articles. But the French press (not the coffee-making kind) is very active, and I cannot read those pieces. Oh, if I struggle, I might be able to get the gist of a short social media snippet, but long articles elude me. Could I have improved my French reading comprehension skills despite my hearing difficulties? Possibly, but I can't see that it would be worth the struggle if I can't speak the language. Besides, I don't really have anyone to speak it with, other than my grandkids, who both do English much better than French although they do have basic French competency.

Back to hockey: I really wrote all of the above to get around to explaining how useful the internet is in keeping tabs on my team. Google provides me with an instant and automatic translation. The app is built right into my Chrome browser. It's set up, so that if I click a French sports page, and I guess any French page, the English translation is instantly there for me. I do not even have to make a separate click to tell it to translate for me.

Here is a sample paragraph in both languages.

Sur le second, il a pratiquement traversé la patinoire d’un bout à l’autre avec la rondelle sur son bâton, battant de vitesse deux rivaux et profitant de l’espace entre les deux défenseurs pour orchestrer un jeu de passe qui allait mener au 10e but de la saison de Josh Anderson.

On the second, he practically crossed the ice from one end to the other with the puck on his stick, beating two rivals and taking advantage of the space between the two defenders to orchestrate a passing play that would lead to Josh Anderson's 10th goal of the season.

Oddly, sometimes if I click a sentence, I will be asked if it was an accurate translation. The answer in my head is always the same: "How would I know?"

Being able to read these pieces helps to occupy my time when I get up cold and achy at 2:30 in the morning, as happened today. It is now almost 6 o'clock, and I will add this piece to my ever-expanding queue to publish . . . whenevah.