I got an email this morning from Patrick, the golfing friend who sails, telling me that the English version of the Rallye des Iles du Soleil website is now on-line. I turned to it with some small degree of excitement to see how my translation from the French version stood up to world-wide exposure.

I had a rapid scan through a number of pages but not all because I'm supposed to be off to the Loire today. There are a few spelling and transposition errors (some of which may well be my fault) but on the whole what I have seen is what I wrote and it looks and sounds not too bad.

A major exception and a severe disappointment however is the welcome page where they have chosen not to use my translation either for the site's slogan or for the text on the picture.

The French slogan is "Ce n'est pas une course, C'est une aventure humaine à la voile." A literal translation would be "It isn't a race, It's a human sailing adventure." That sounds daft to me and I'd wager that most English speakers would find the use of the word "human" there a bit strange. It surely raises in our minds the possibility of an "animal" sailing adventure or an "insect" sailing adventure but that contrast is not raised in the French speaker's mind by the expression "aventure humaine".

Perhaps they can't imagine insects having adventures. Haven't they read Kafka?

Anyway I thought long and hard and even consulted a language forum to come up with something that would give the idea behind the phrase and which would also sound like English. My answer was "It isn't a race, It's a real life adventure under sail."

But they've stuck to the literal translation with a "fabulous" thrown in out of the blue for good measure.

On the picture it says "LA GRANDE TRAVERSÉE DE L'AUTHENTIQUE
Embarquez pour un voyage à la voile unique, libre mais jamais seul !
A la découverte des peuples d'Afrique, du Brésil et de l'Amazonie."

The question that arises is - Is it the great crossing that is authentic or is it the authentic crossing that is great?

I believe the former and thus offered "THE AUTHENTIC GREAT CROSSING Embark on a unique adventure under sail, free but never alone! Discover the peoples of Africa, Brazil and the Amazon."

But what has appeared is "THE GREAT AUTHENTIC CROSSING! Embark for a very unique sailing trip, free but never alone! Meeting the people of Africa, Brazil and Amazonia."

Now you could quibble about their having preferred "Embark for" over "Embark on" or "Meeting" over "Discover" or "sailing trip" over "adventure under sail". Who cares I say.

BUT - degrees of uniqueness don't exist so "very unique" is a nonsense not a translation preference.

I suppose I feel a bit like the apocryphal Hollywood screenwriter whose work is overwritten by the next one. Fortunately I'm not credited with the translation.