Thème anglais "Où es-tu ?"

Chers profs bonjour,

Je voudrais bien savoir si ces quelques nuances sont acceptables ou pas. Merci d'avance.

Texte français : Marc Lévy, Où es-tu?, 2005

Quand Tom gara la Jeep devant chez lui, Susan resta immobile.
- Tu te souviens des rêves que tu faisais quand tu étais petit ? demanda-t-elle.
- J'ai déjà du mal avec ceux de la nuit dernière, répondit Thomas.
- Non, je te parle de ce que tu rêvais de devenir quand tu serais adulte.
- Oui, ça je m'en souviens, je voulais être médecin. (…)
- Moi, je voulais être peintre, pour dessiner le monde en couleur, et Philip voulait être pompier pour sauver les gens. Il est devenu créatif dans la publicité et moi j'oeuvre dans l'humanitaire. On a dû se tromper quelque part tous les deux.
- Ce n'est pas le seul domaine où vous vous êtes trompés tous les deux.
- Ca veut dire quoi, ça ?
- Tu parles beaucoup de lui et chaque fois que tu prononces son nom, ta voix est nostalgique, ça laisse peu de place au doute.
- A quel doute ?
- Aux tiens ! Je crois que tu aimes cet homme et que ça te fiche une peur bleue.
- Viens, rentrons chez toi, je commence à avoir froid.

Traduction :

1) When Tom parked the Jeep in front of his house, Susan stood still.
2) "Do you remember the dreams you were doing / used to do when you were little?" she asked.
[Ce serait faux de dire "the dreams you were making"]

3) "I find it already difficult/hard to remember the dreams from last night," answered Thomas.
[ce serait faux de mettre l'article "the" devant "dreams" ici ?]

4) "No, I’m talking about what you wanted to be when you would be a grown-up/an adult."
5) "Yes, I remember that, I wanted to be a doctor. (…)"

6) “As for me, I wanted to become a painter / I wanted to become a painter myself, to draw a world full of colour/colours, and Philip wanted to be a fireman / fire-fighter to rescue people.

[a) "le monde" est traduit par "a world" je comprends l'utilité de ce changement mais pourriez-vous m'expliquer la raison "technique" de cette transposition grammaticale ?

b) Peut-on mettre "colour" au pluriel ou pas ?]

7) He has become an advert designer and I work in humanitarian aid / am doing humanitarian work.
[mais quand on dit "I am working as a volunteer / I am volunteering" est-ce clair qu'il s'agit d'une cause humanitaire ?]

8) We both must have made a mistake at some point.”

9) "It’s not the only field where you both made a mistake."
10) "What do you mean (by that) ?

11) "You talk a lot about him and every/each time you say/utter his name, your voice is quite nostalgic, there is no doubt about your feelings."
[On explique l'implicite ici ?]

12) - A quel doute ? = "What do you mean?"
[En raison de l'explicitation de la phrase précédente, une traduction radicalement différente de l'original s'impose, n'est-ce pas ?]

13) "I'm talking about your feelings, I think you love this man and that makes you scared to death / freak out."

14) "Come on, let’s go to your place / home, I’m getting cold / it is freezing outside."

15) - Comment fais-tu pour avoir autant de courage pour les autres et si peu pour toi ?
"How can you have so much courage for others and so little for yourself?”

[Je ne sais si c'est possible de traduire littéralement la phrase française. Doit-on au contraire étoffer l'anglais et dire quelque chose comme "…so much courage when it comes to helping others and so little when it comes to …. yourself"? Mais dans ce cas je ne sais pas quoi mettre avant "yourself".]

Best regards,
Hela

How are you doing Hela?

hela a écrit : 1) When Tom parked the Jeep in front of his house, Susan stood still.
I suggest a phrasing using "as" rather than "when" here. The reason is that "when" is used to refer to a finite action taken in its entirety (it's a bit more sudden). Using "as" would be more appropriate in this context, where the important information is that Susan stood still throughout the maœuvre.
-> Susan stood still as Tom parked the car in front of his house.

2) "Do you remember the dreams you were doing / used to do when you were little?" she asked.
[Ce serait faux de dire "the dreams you were making"]
To have a dream : "Do you remember the dreams you had as a child?

3) "I find it already difficult/hard to remember the dreams from last night," answered Thomas.
[ce serait faux de mettre l'article "the" devant "dreams" ici ?]
"The dreams from last night" means "les rêves que toutes les personnes du monde ont fait la nuit dernière." You should use "my dreams" instead. "Difficult" and "hard" are both correct.
"I can barely remember the ones I had last night, answered Thomas."

4) "No, I’m talking about what you wanted to be when you would be a grown-up/an adult."
"No, I'm talking about the dreams you had for your adult life."

5) "Yes, I remember that, I wanted to be a doctor. (…)"
Minor gripe, but the original text uses a lot of emphasis at the start of the sentence "Oui, ça je m'en souviens…". I would use "Yes, I do remember that…"

6) “As for me, I wanted to become a painter / I wanted to become a painter myself, to draw a world full of colour/colours, and Philip wanted to be a fireman / fire-fighter to rescue people.
A couple of things :
Susan has no real reason to use "As for me" here, since it is something she would say if she had also been saying what Tom wanted to do. "Tom wanted to become a doctor. As for me, I wanted to become a painter." So you should go with your second proposition.
"to draw a world full of colours" : I know that you stuck to the original text here, but in English, this would suggest that the real world is black and white, and that she would add colour to it in her paintings. I would perhaps translate to something like "to show the world in all its colourful glory".
"Philip wanted to be a fire-fighter to rescue people" : we tend to avoid using the word "man" in job titles nowadays, since it is a bit misogynistic. You wouldn't say a "policeman", but a "police officer" for example. Same thing for "fireman", don't use it. Firefighter is perfect, but there is no dash between "fire" and "fighter".
One last thing : "rescue people" is a bit more precise than "save". It implies that people are trapped somewhere and need rescuing. I'd rather you use "save" here, which is very general and imprecise, as firefighters will sometimes have to save the lives of people who are not trapped anywhere, but are for example having a seizure instead.
"I wanted to become a painter myself, to show the world in all its colourful glory. And Philip wanted to become a firefighter to save people."

[a) "le monde" est traduit par "a world" je comprends l'utilité de ce changement mais pourriez-vous m'expliquer la raison "technique" de cette transposition grammaticale ?
I'm going to reply in English to avoid switching between the two languages throughout my post. What do you mean by « "le monde" est traduit par "a world" »? Did you not translate the text yourself?
The reason it was translated to "a world" rather than "the world" is because if you said "I want to draw the world (…)" your audience might understand that you actually want to draw the whole world in one painting (eg. draw the Earth). But if you say "I want to draw a world (…)", you mean that if someone was to look at all of your paintings as a whole, they would see the world. In my proposition the confusion is less likely to happen, since "to show the world" can be achieved through the use of one or several paintings.

b) Peut-on mettre "colour" au pluriel ou pas ?]
I would recommend it. It is safe to assume there would have been many different colours on her paintings.

7) He has become an advert designer and I work in humanitarian aid / am doing humanitarian work.
I think the tense is wrong here. "He has become" means that up to this point, he was in the process of becoming an advert designer, and he just managed to become one. It is safe to assume that he has been an advert designer for quite some time. So you should write "He became an advert designer."

[mais quand on dit "I am working as a volunteer / I am volunteering" est-ce clair qu'il s'agit d'une cause humanitaire ?]
No, to volunteer means to step up for a cause, whatever it is ("I volunteered to take the nightshift", etc.). Don't use it here.
"He became an advert designer, and I do humanitarian work."

8) We both must have made a mistake at some point.”
"I guess we both made a mistake at some point…"

9) "It’s not the only field where you both made a mistake."
"to make a mistake in a field" sounds a bit weird.
"It's not the only time you both made a mistake."

10) "What do you mean (by that) ?
I think "by that" is necessary here, as she is probably a bit offended by Tom's reply. Watch the space between "that" and "?". There shouldn't be any.

11) "You talk a lot about him and every/each time you say/utter his name, your voice is quite nostalgic, there is no doubt about your feelings."
[On explique l'implicite ici ?]
This sentence is a bit convoluted for my tastes. Simplify it.
"Well you mention him all the time, and your voice gets all wistful when you do. There's no doubt about what's going on. Except for you maybe."

12) - A quel doute ? = "What do you mean?"
[En raison de l'explicitation de la phrase précédente, une traduction radicalement différente de l'original s'impose, n'est-ce pas ?]
"Oh yeah? And what's that?"

13) "I'm talking about your feelings, I think you love this man and that makes you scared to death / freak out."
"I think you're in love with him, and it freaks you out."

14) "Come on, let’s go to your place / home, I’m getting cold / it is freezing outside."
Susan cannot say "let's go to your place", since they are already there -> "Let's go inside."
"Come on, let's go inside. It's getting cold here."

15) - Comment fais-tu pour avoir autant de courage pour les autres et si peu pour toi ?
"How can you have so much courage for others and so little for yourself?”
"to have courage for others" is a bit dodgy + it implies that the "others" are cowards, and she has to be brave for them.
[Je ne sais si c'est possible de traduire littéralement la phrase française. Doit-on au contraire étoffer l'anglais et dire quelque chose comme "…so much courage when it comes to helping others and so little when it comes to …. yourself"? Mais dans ce cas je ne sais pas quoi mettre avant "yourself".]
A bit redundant, but this could be a solution. You could write "… so much courage when it comes to helping others but so little when it comes to helping yourself?"
"How can you muster up the courage to address other people's problems when you can't even face yours?

I'll try to find the time to correct your Syrian crisis text later on, but I'm a bit busy now.

Best of luck

Merci mille fois, hellsgate ! C'est très gentil de votre part de commenter vos corrections. Cela m'aide beaucoup.

A très bientôt j'espère.
Respectueusement


Bonsoir, Une dernière phrase, svp. 🙂

Au petit matin elle quitta le lit sans faire de bruit et s'éclipsa sur la pointe des pieds.

a) At daybreak she sneaked out of bed and slipped away on her tiptoes.
b) In the early hours she sneaked out of bed and tiptoed out of the house.

Merci