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June 4, 2009 10:03 AM   Subscribe

please translate some French for me: nous n'irons au bois les lauriers sont / ne sont pas coupes.

also: the expression "porte á" as in porte a chambre. porte a salle.
thanks a zillion
posted by Jason and Laszlo to Writing & Language (17 answers total)
 
Porte à chambre literally means "door to chamber," i.e. bedroom door. (Or "chamber door," if you're reading Poe in French for some reason.)
posted by Sys Rq at 10:12 AM on June 4, 2009


are you sure those words are in the right order?
posted by Grimble at 10:17 AM on June 4, 2009


Marcel Broodthaers, eh?
posted by Sys Rq at 10:20 AM on June 4, 2009


Your first item is not structured gramatically at all, and seems to be two phrases -- well, two and a half (because you have two different verbs separated by a slash) -- smooshed together. The word "laurier" is a type of tree; laurel in English IIRC. I would guess it to be something like "We are not going to the woods the laurels have/have not been cut."

And your second two are "door to the bedroom" and "door to the room."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:20 AM on June 4, 2009


Yeah, I don't think this is a full sentence. We will go to the woods...maybe there's a "where" missing? Where the laurels are/are not cut? Because the laurels are not cut? To cut the laurels?
posted by Pax at 10:22 AM on June 4, 2009


Ah, from this and this, I see.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:25 AM on June 4, 2009


my mother tongue is french. I've never heard/read "porte a chambre. porte a salle". Is it from ancient french ? From a door company commercial litterature that got the Babelfish treatment ?

The door of the bedroom : La porte de la chambre.
posted by Baud at 10:37 AM on June 4, 2009


The original post left out "plus": nous n'irons plus au bois (from the link that Burhanistan provided).
posted by brianogilvie at 10:40 AM on June 4, 2009


I think "nous n'irons au bois" should read "Nous N'irons Plus Au Bois", which is the title of an old French nursery rhyme/song. The second line of the song is "Les lauriers sont coupés". The literal translation is "We won't go to the woods any more, the bay (as in laurel) has been cut". If this has anything to do with the French novel from the 1800s entitled "Les Lauriers Sont Coupés", then it might be useful to know that the title used in English was "We'll To the Woods No More" for the original loose translation and "The Bays are Sere" for the more recent translation. "Sere" here is referring to the bay being dried out after being cut.
posted by ssg at 10:45 AM on June 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


Apparently it's also the title of a movie from 1970.

I'm familiar with the phrase as a line from the Jacques Brel song La Colombe:

Nous n'irons plus au bois, la colombe est blessée
Nous n'allons pas au bois, nous allons la tuer

Apparently it derives from a poem which can be found in Google Books here.

Nous n'irons plus au bois, les lauriers sont coupés

(We won't go into the woods anymore, the laurels have been cut.)
posted by matildaben at 10:45 AM on June 4, 2009


Nous n'irons plus au bois
We won't go to the woods anymore
Les lauriers [sont/ne sont pas] coupes
The bays[1] [have/haven't been] cut

[1] Bay/laurel, or maybe bay laurel -- tree, anyhow
posted by jeather at 10:51 AM on June 4, 2009


I would guess it is simultaneously an utterance and its negation, suggesting that Joyce both did and did not write Ulysses.
posted by metastability at 10:53 AM on June 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: yes, Broodthaers. Certainly he's playing with words. Thanks for the translations and reference to the lullaby. Very helpful.
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 11:05 AM on June 4, 2009


Seeing the 'porte à' sign, I can't help thinking it's actually short for 'porte à porte' (door to door), that's the only common way I'd ever use the preposition 'à' after porte.
You could either use 'de' then the room's name, or 'en' followed by the material, or nothing if an adjective follows: all three cases being in the sign.
It would make sense if that artist does try for puns.

The 'Nous n'irons plus au bois' is definitely making reference to the lullaby I think.
posted by tweemy at 11:41 AM on June 4, 2009


There's a lovely rendering (not really a translation, more a paraphrase) of Nous n'irons plus au bois / Les lauriers sont coupés by A.E. Housman:

We'll to the woods no more,
The laurels all are cut,
The bowers are bare of bay
That once the Muses wore:
The year draws in the day
And soon will evening shut:
The laurels all are cut,
We'll to the woods no more.
Oh we'll no more, no more
To the leafy woods away,
To the high wild woods of laurel
And the bowers of bay no more.

posted by verstegan at 12:20 PM on June 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: thanks Burhanistan, but that press release does not actually translate the phrase!
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 2:35 PM on June 4, 2009


AFAIK - French is not my first language - the "porte a" thing is a snippet of a phrase and could be all sorts of things, that's the point - since it's in all caps on that sign in the artwork in question, even what accents would be on that phrase are eliminated which makes it more ambiguous. I think. If I remember rules correctly.

"Porte a" could be an phrase saying "brings to" as in "brings to my attention" or could be an order saying "wears to" in certain senses, as in "porté à merveille" (worn brilliantly) or could be the start of a sentence saying "the door had/did" such as "la porte a fermé" eg "the door had closed," or saying "the door with ____" in the sense of "the door made of ____." Or "porte à ____" could be "the door for going to ____," or "___te porte à ___" could be "____ brings you to ____."

My thought initially for "porte à salle" would be "door for a room" even though that's not a known thing, maybe you could invent it since you're playing with language: a particular kind of door that is only meant for rooms and not for other places. Or "porté à salle" could be part of a really particular sentence in a weird world where a room is a specific place where specific things happen and there are specific things you wear for going there, I think.. there has to be a possible sentence where you'd use this phrase and it would be correct. Or it could be a phrase talking about Door A, Room ___, as in "Porte A, Salle ____."
posted by citron at 2:08 PM on June 6, 2009


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