This can usually be found on Twitter.
Not knowing French at all, I figured I was missing out on a good part of Lolita (the novel by Vladimir Nabokov). So I've tried to figure out the meaning of every French phrase used in the book, mostly by using Google's Language Tools. Let me know if I got anything wrong!
In the following list, page numbers refer to the Second Vintage International Edition, June 1997.
- Foreword
- Part One
- Chapter 1
- (p10) Mon cher petit papa: My dear small dad.
- (p11) Lycée: The second and last stage of secondary education in the French educational system.
- (p15) Manqué: Lit. missed, might be used for someone who could have become something but didn't, or somebody who was a failure at something. See the Wikipedia article on manqué for a full meaning.
- (p16) Histoire Abrégée de la poésie anglaise: An abridged history of English poetry. (?)
- (p21) Frétillement: wriggling.
- (p21) Cent: one hundred.
- (p21) Tant pis: too bad, what a shame.
- (p21) Monsieur: sir, mister.
- (p22) Bidet: See bidet.
(To be continued)
Labels: french, lolita, to be continued
This post was posted by Unknown at 7:37 pm