Rebecca La Rebelle, and your Monday French lesson

Hello, darlings. I thought I'd rise up from my swoon couch (ha! (you know, because that's where I landed right after I finished my revisions for LIKE NO OTHER LOVER, which my editor pronounced "wonderful," and that's where I've been, cool damp cloth over my forehead, shades drawn, tinkly New Age music playing, slave boys murmuring soothing, flattering things to me to help me regain my strength) to share something fun with you.  As I've said before, one of the best parts of being an author is connecting with people all over the world via stories, and over there to the left is THE RUNAWAY DUKE -- translated into French!!  Rebecca La Rebelle  (that's the Amazon France link)-- Rebecca the Rebel -- good title, eh?? It's really a trip to flip through the foreign versions of my books.  Connor is "Conrad" in this version, and instead of Roarke (which is Connor's real name in the English version—he was Roarke Edward Connor Riordan Blackburn) they've called him "Harry," for inscrutable French reasons. And because I'm really just a snickering teenager deep down, I paged to the love scenes to see if I could discover the French word for "erection." I do know some French (I read it better than I speak it), and I can usually guess the meaning of a French sentence pretty accurately if I have a few other sentences around it for context, or if I at least know one or two words in it. Anyway, I do believe the word—well, actually, it turned out to be wordS—are "membre dressé ."  I'm sure you can guess the meaning of the first word, and the second one is descriptive of the first word's condition. :) So there's your Monday French lesson. LOL. You're quite welcome. :) I have to tell you though, when I read those particular kinds of scenes (say, pages 216-220 or so in THE RUNAWAY DUKE) aloud in French, they're sexy as all get out.  I'm dying to hone my French by working my way through the whole story. And the French translation of TO LOVE A THIEF —Pickpocket en jupons—will be out in April in France, and a beautiful online French magazine called Les Romantiques featured an interview with me this month, too, if you haven't had a chance to check it out. The German translation of BEAUTY AND THE SPY, I'm told, will be out in September, and it will be called GARDEN OF DESIRE. Isn't this fun?? I'll post more foreign covers with you as I have them. I have the Polish version of Beauty and the Spy, and it's beautiful, but I have to scan it.

How is everyone?? I'm busy with various little projects, all of which I'll tell you about you if they turn out the way I want them to. :) Did you have a nice Easter? We're having beautiful weather—clear, sunny, very windy and ferociously cold if you're walking against the wind. Also, I wanted to point something out to you—in my list of blogs/websites over to the right is The Hunger Site, and if you visit it once a day and just click on the various tabs—just click, that's all you need to do—they'll donate a certain amount of money to Hunger, Rainforest, Animal Rescue, Breast Cancer, Child Health and Literacy causes. You'll see what I mean—there are different tabs. It's fast and easy and it feels good to do it!!

Comments

[Charlene]

Ahh Julie...you are such a hoot! If I had French lessons like yours when I was young, I would be speaking it like a native!!! LOL Survived the chocolate assault AKA Easter and glad to see that you are well. :)

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Charlene!! LOL -- Can you imagine if that had been an elective in school -- Erotic French 101A?? We'd ALL be fluently bilingual!! :) Glad you survived Easter. :) I'm still working my way through my wee chocolate stash. I've relieved all the chocolate bunnies of their ears. :) I should go see what kind of chocolate is on sale at the supermarket today! I like it very, very, very dark.

[Ranurgis]

Hi, Julie. I know, long time no see. Since I didn't want to be a member of Facebook or MySpace or whatever it is you're on, and you haven't blogged much here, well...seldom "the twain shall meet."

Congratulations on the French translation! Is this your first one?

There are several things about translations that you'll have to get used to:

1. Foreigners love to change the names of characters if they aren't well known, like Connor. I can remember reading my first German translations and coming to names that no respectable English writer would have used. I guess it all depends on what associations the name might have or call up in a French reader's mind. I'll look in my French-only dictionary for words similar to Connor to see what their objection might be. They might be doing you a favor.

2. Though French is the language with the fourth-highest number of words in the world, it has been strictly regulated by the Academie Francaise (sorry, I can't get the proper accents) for many years and disdains the use of Anglicisms in any form. However, since "to have/maintain an erection [of penis]" in the Collins Robert French-English dictionary comes up with the French as "avoir/maintenir une erection" (with an accent aigu on the first e), I wonder why they have the circumlocution. LOL. Maybe it just isn't used other than with those two verbs.

Since I've done a number of translations from English to French for my brother, I know that French does not go for economy of language. In some cases, the English is half as long as the French. I guess that's one reason why those doing business in Canada are unhappy about having to provide all information in two languages on all packaging. One difference is the use of "de" in so many constructions to indicate possession or certain processes in which English just uses a noun as an adjective, e.g., "world" politics but probably comes up something like "la politique du monde."

But definitely, way to go, Julie. I hope you have fun reading the French version. When I was first in France as a teenager, staying au pair with a family with 7 kids, I read a lot of children's books and comics like Tintin to get myself into the language. In the meantime, I have quite a number of books by French romance authors including the Angelique books (from 1958) by (Serge)Anne Golon and the Catherine books (from 1964) by Juliette Benzoni in French. Those were still a little more restrained in the erotic language, though somewhat infamous in their time.

[Ranurgis]

P.S. I can only wonder which book had this cover originally. That's another thing other countries, especially German publishers, seem to do a lot: buy a bunch of cover pictures and stick them on whichever book they want to. I can remember one translation that I bought in Germany in 1995 by the cover, only to discover later that the actual book was not the same as that using the cover originally. I think it was one of the early Amanda Quick covers by Pino which I really loved. Since it had been stuck on the translation of one of my other favorites of the time, I kept it but tried to make sure that the other covers were on the correct books as far as I could remember them. It didn't always work out and it became a game to fit the covers I got with the original books.

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Ranurgis!! WElcome back!! How's life?? I ctually don't blog any more at MySpace or Facebook than I do here, so you're not missing much. You can tell when I'm deeply absorbed in something deadline-oriented by how quiet the blog gets. LOL. Thanks for the French insight! "Conrad" is a perfectly lovely substitute for "Connor" as far as I'm concerned, but i'd be curious to see if you arrive at a theory for the change. :) I love seeing the differences in languages and the editing/translation choices (the ones I can read) and reasoning out the reasons for them. It must be fun to learn a language by reading romance. :) I have a French version of the Little Prince, which I can read fairly fluently.

And I know what you mean about covers: Cover artists generally maintain the rights to covers, and they can sell them again and again, so you often see familiar covers on foreign translations. E.g., The cover of an English version of THE RUNAWAY DUKE ended up on a Spanish version of a Lisa Kleypas book.!! LOL. It IS fun to play spot the cover. I'd love to hear if anyone else has discovered anything like that.

[Fedora]

Julie, that is SO cool! I took high school French, and agree that it would be a hoot to practice on a translation of your books! I do like the colors of your cover--how many of your books have been translated into how many languages? Do they even keep you abreast of all of them, or do you just find out in passing at some point along the way? Or possibly just spot them in a bookstore in Prague?

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Fedora!! Maybe I'll hold a French vocabulary lesson on the blog on a regular basis. LOL. I like the colors on the cover, too -- J'ai Lu, the French publisher, seems to have a distinctive look for their books, and they all look a bit like Rebecca La Rebelle. I like it! I was browing Amazon.Fr, and this is how I learned this. :) My agent's diligent Foreign Rights Director is responsible for selling the Foreign translation Rights of my books to various countries, and she rocks. :) I've had people from many different countries on my mailing list for years, so it's a pleasure when I can tell them they can read my books in their own languages. So far, we've sold translation rights to quite a few countries: France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Germany, Spain, Japan, China...and I hope I'm not forgetting anyone! I've seen the covers of a few of these. They have the German cover of THE GARDEN OF DESIRE up on Amazon.de. :) I'll post that one at some point, too! :) I don't always know right off the bat when foreign translations will be released. I signed the French contract last year, I believe, and the French books recently arrived at my house, which is how I knew they'd been published in France. LOL. And I have a German friend at Loveletter Magazin who told me about BEAUTY AND THE SPY (THE GARDEN OF DESIRE) being released in September there. I kind of like the suprise factor involved. :)

[Lareign]

The Garden of Desire, eh? I am not making jokes about the shrubbery in the garden of desire. That would be wrong.

Congrats on the translations-speaking of German, I have a half-German friend, but I doubt he'd be too interested in translating romance novels, seeing as he's gay and all. :) But he's a dear, and it's really funny when he gets mad and starts cursing in German.

I love the Animal Rescue Site. Once I got my mom some birthday presents or Mother's Day presents from that site. It's lovely.

Things are OK here. Torndadic stuff to the north and south, but we're OK so far. Will you be at the RITAs this year? I saw the nominations, and then saw the site and said Hey it's Julie's backyard, practically.

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Lareign!! :) You're cracking me up, as usual. Glad life is treating you well enough. Here's hoping the tornados forget all about you guys. :) And I actually love the German title for BATS, because if you read it you'll recall that Kit and Susannah got up to some hijinks in the outdoors. LOL. I *do* like an outdoor love scene. Probably because I spend so much time indoors these days. LOL. And I'll totally be at the RWA Conference in San Francisco!! It's like...oh, a 20 minute, half hour train ride from my house. I've been looking forward to this one for years!!!! And one of my best writer buddies, Toni Blake, has been nominated for a Rita! I'm so jazzed. :) At the conference, my agent STeve Axelrod and I are also giving a presentation there called "Why Publishing is Making You Crazy—and What You Can Do About It: The Tao of Publishing." LOL. And you thought i was *born* crazy. Anyway, it's going to be a fun week or so for me. One day you'll have to check out an RWA conference if you haven't yet -- surely it's tax deductible if you're a journalist?? :)

[Lareign]

Haha, Julie, I like the title as well. And thanks for jogging my memory on the scene. Nice presentation name. I think all writers are crazy, journalists included. The industry just gives us an excuse.

A conference might be fun someday, if I'm ever near enough to one. This summer, I may be headed for NYC for a vacation. I haven't been since my high school drama club went, seven years ago. And I'd stay with friends, so they'd show me all the cool stuff rather than all the touristy stuff (although the latter is OK in small doses).

On Facebook, you should look into getting Catbook for your guy. I have it for mine, and it's a lot of fun. Lola even got a marriage proposal. She had to gracefully decline, as she is an independent woman. And spayed.

[Fedora]

That's really cool, Julie! It would be a real hoot to see some of the Asian language translations (I'd be curious both about the covers and the translations--I have a wisp of familiarity with Chinese, and wonder what they'd read like--I'd probably have to ask my mom or MIL...) And French vocab snippets would be fun! (Although at this point, I probably wouldn't remember anything!) :)

[Kathy K]

... I'm baaaaack! I finally figured that if I visit here in the evenings ~ when I'm not at the gym (that was my March resolution... I'm a little slow sometimes *grin*) ~ I can actually spend some time!
Lately I've been having the little rugrats at least 4 days a week.. and holy cow... I'm sooo glad that my kids are no longer little.. I'd be hospitalized... or at least feel as though I should be.

And wow, you're sure getting your name all 'round the world Julie... that's fantastic!
I love the cover for "Rebecca la Rebelle" .. and I find it very interesting in the complete changeover of the title. But then I'm used to seeing the french and english on packages... and knowing some french really makes me giggle when I see the sometimes total differences between the two languages on the same package for the same item. It really makes you wonder how all these different countries have managed to communicate. LOL

I've not seen very many foreign language books of stories that I have read, but I have noticed the same cover appearing on two different books a couple of times. The first time that I saw it I was rather confuzzled.

Anyway, I had a few minutes to visit here while my daughter was otherwise engaged... but she's back needing the computer for school work... guess I can't tell her to wait her turn... hehehe

[Julie Anne Long]

Catbook, Lareign?? What a crackup! Yeah, my cat doesn't have enough cat friends. LOL. I'd have to teach him how to use the computer!! Then he'd stop whining at me incessantly to go out in the yard. Something about Spring maybe, and he's become insufferable. He can't go out there unescorted (it's a whole journey down stairs and through the garage, etc. to get there, and he's not allowed to go alone), so he bellows at me until I escort him out there, and then if it's his idea of too cold or too warm, we go right back in. He's a big powderpuff.

Kathy!! So glad things are going well -- I figured that you, like all of us, are crazy busy. LOL. You're a rock star for going to the gym!! I mostly do my trampoline and free weights while I listen to AC/DC or something similarly motivating. LOL. But I miss some of the gym equipment, so I've been thinking about going back. Lord knows chasing around the little ones is probably great exercise....for the nerves. :)

Title changes on foreign editions are interesting, but I bet, in the instance of France for example, they might not have a single word for "Runaway." Or perhaps they come up with new titles that they know will be more interesting/compelling to readers in their countries than the original American ones.

And I'm with you, Fedora -- can't wait to see the Asian versions of my books!! I have a couple of friends who can read a little Chinese, for instance, but I can't read any. I'd love to learn! I can read a little French, Spanish and Italian. I'd like to learn an entirely different language, like an Eastern European language, or Cantonese (a really useful language in the SF Bay Area.)

I've been working on a couple of little projects, one of which I'll share with you in a week or so :) , and I'm revamping my newsletter, because I think it's time it's had a facelift. :) And I have to rethink portions of my website, too, which might turn into a huge project. LOL. And write a couple of books. The next Pennyroyal Green book will be *delicious.* I really like LIKE NO OTHER LOVER, but I always have a phase of infatuation with the next one I'm writing, and that's the phase I'm in. :)

[Kathy K]

As for getting to the gym, if I don't leave home, I don't do much of the 'exercise' thing. And I'm enjoying my time away from home... not so much to get away from the family... just the house. I mean, I'm here nearly 24/7, and while I do like it, it's not my life.

Anyway, all the kidlets are up from their naps... I've gotta figure a way to get them all sleeping at the same time...
I know, dream big why don't I? *grin*

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