Audio: "Amélioré" (French translation of "Better")

A special bonus podcast for all you Francophiles. Thanks to my friend Pauline for lending her voice to this project!

(She may also have corrected one or two words from Jeff's original translation. Dude, how would I know?)

Music: "FoDorchestrastrings" by queeniemusic, licensed under Creative Commons from ccMixter.

How Do You Say "Robot Overlords" in French?

My good friend Jeff has translated my short story "Better" into French for a class he's taking. Read "Amélioré" now!

Here are Jeff's notes on the translation:

I had a bit of trouble deciding on the title, I'm still not decidé... "Amélioré" means "improved". There's also "Meiux", which is the simple translation of "better", like "the better quality stories come from Curtis". But I think your title refers to the process of making soldiers better, i.e. improved soldiers. So I chose amélioré.

I also did not reproduce the spelling in destroy all machines. I think what you are trying to show is the passage of time, which has eroded/changed the words.

The reason why I didn't do it in French is that the effect does not really translate to French well. French is a language with one true way to spell words. It is not clear how to reflect the passage of time on French words -- at least to someone with such a tenuous grasp of the language. My teacher agreed that she couldn't think of a way to handle it. One nice thing is that the French word for "old things" is ancien, which is the same as the French word for "ancient". So in French there is, by design of the language, the possibility that we are talking about really really old words, not just the old words from the uncle.

To make up for it a bit, I did choose the harshest, most violent version of "destroy" available in French, a word I'd never heard before. My teacher said it was a really good fit. (anéantir = to lay waste to (a town), to shatter (a dream))

Thanks, Jeff!

I don't speak French, but if someone out there would like to record an audio version of Jeff's translation, I'd love to hear it.

"Amélioré" (French translation of "Better")

Amélioré
par Curtis C. Chen (traduit de l'anglais par Jeff R. Allen)

Pour son dix-huitième anniversaire, Jadrew Linbitter s'est absenté de son travail et, comme le veut la tradition, il a fait un poignard de son os de la jambe.

La cérémonie de remplacement était ordinaire. Les medicos ont insensibilisé la partie inférieure de son corps et Jadrew n'a senti aucune douleur quand ils ont scié sa jambe gauche, juste dessus du genou. Il a détourné son regard, vers son père, et singé son fier sourire alors que il criait à l'intérieur.

Son péroné, vidé de la chair, restait désormais dans un solution diagénétique pour remplacer les tissus durs avec un polymère durable pour le préserver. Son tibia, préparé de la même manière, sera taillé en forme de lame rituelle, gravé avec les textes sacrés, et puis métallisé.

Le écran sur le mur clignotait. Il a mit à côte son couteau électrique et a engagé le telemet. La visage de sa sœur apparut.

« Tu profites d'une journée de congé? » demanda Konri.

« Milliards, » dit Jadrew. Il a montra son tibia aigu. « Bientôt, je serai prêt à tuer quelqu'un. »

Konri rit. « Est-ce que tu te souviens ces figures cableman que tu as sculpté pour grand-père? Il vient de les faire en résine pour les exposer dans son bureau. »

Bon, pensa Jadrew. Un petit morceau en plus de ma vie minable préservé dans les siècles.

« Tout le monde ici est si fier, » dit Konri.

Jadrew sentit que il était en train de rougir. Il imagina comment la famille regarderait son nouveau membre bionique. « Je dois le finir. Papa va vouloir le voir ce soir. »

« Tu as toujours été un bon garçon. » Konri sourit. « Désormais, tu est un bon homme. »

Elle éteignit, et Jadrew a projeté son tibia vers le mur, en espérant que il se fracasse. Il a resté intact. Jadrew a poussé un soupir et repris l'os. Il se demanda si il habituera a la son de son pied métallique nu sur le sol.

Il pouvait voir tous sa vie devant lui, prédétermine, sans choix. Après deux ans, les medicos remplaceront sa jambe droite, et il entrera dans le service des conscrits. Si il survit à ça, il gagnera ses bras. Et son père sera si heureux.

Jadrew regarda son couteau électrique. Ça sera facile, de finir le charade d'obédience, avant que il étouffe sa volonté. Tout simplement, il pourra sélectionner puissance max, mettra le à sa tempe, et poussera le bouton.

Mais où peut-on trouver le sens de cette action? Il a voulu son dernier acte en ait.

Il a regardé le côte de sa lame inachevée et sourit.

Son oncle Sidrav lui a enseigné les mots, depuis des années, avant que il soit relevé comme un partie de le résistance. L'exécution de Sidav avait déshonoré la famille, mais Jadrew n'a jamais oublié les contes séditieux, raconté dans la obscurité vers l'heure de se coucher.

Il mit au travail de nouveau. Il mit une lame élégante, dentelé et il la grava avec les mots rebelles anciens:

anéantissons toutes les machines

Le père de Jadrew a trouva son corps, transpercé dans le cœur par la lame. Avant tout, il a effaça les mots blasphématoires de la lame. Puis, il s'assit sur le lit a côte son fils mort et se mit à pleurer entre ses mains métalliques.

"Better"

BETTER
By Curtis C. Chen

On his eighteenth birthday, Jadrew Linbitter stayed home from work and, as tradition decreed, made a dagger out of his leg bone.

The replacement ceremony had been unremarkable. The medicos had numbed his lower body, and Jadrew hadn't felt any pain as they sawed into his left leg just above the knee. He had looked away, toward his father, and aped that proud paternal grin while screaming on the inside.

His fibula, stripped clean of flesh, was now resting in a diagenetic solution which would replace the hard tissue with a durable polymer for preservation. His similarly prepared tibia would be metallized after he had whittled it into a ritual blade and carved both sides with scripture.

The viewscreen on his bedroom wall blinked. He put down his cutter and engaged the telemet. His sister's face appeared.

"Enjoying your day off?" Konri asked.

"Billions," Jadrew said. He held up his sharpened tibia. "I'll be ready to kill someone soon."

Konri laughed. "Hey, remember those cableman figurines you sculpted for grandfather? He's just had them resin-cased for display in his office."

Great, thought Jadrew. Another piece of my crummy life preserved for centuries.

"Everyone here is so proud," Konri said.

Jadrew felt himself blushing. He could imagine how the family would gawk at his new bionic limb. "I'd better finish this. Father will want to see it tonight."

"You always were a good boy." Konri smiled. "And now you're a good man."

She switched off, and Jadrew threw his tibia against the wall, half hoping it would shatter. It didn't. He sighed and retrieved the bone, wondering if he would ever get used to the clacking of his bare metal foot against the floor.

He could see his whole life laid out before him, predetermined, choiceless. In two years, the medicos would replace his right leg, and he would enter conscripted service. If he survived that, he would earn his arms. And his father would be so happy.

Jadrew stared at his cutter. It would be easy to end this charade of obedience before it smothered his will. He just had to dial up the laser, place it against his temple, and push the button.

But where was the significance in that? If he was going to kill himself, he wanted his last act to have meaning.

He looked down at the flat of his bone-blade and smiled.

His uncle Sidrav had taught him the words, years ago, before being exposed as part of the underground. Sidrav's execution had shamed the family, but Jadrew had never forgotten his uncle's seditious tales, whispered in darkness before bedtime.

He turned his cutter back to the bone and worked with new purpose. He made an elegant, serrated blade and etched it with the ancient rebel slogan:

DEESTROY ALL MASHEENS

Jadrew's father found his body, pierced through the heart with the bone dagger. The first thing he did was to abrade the blasphemous message from the exposed blade. Then he sat on the bed next to his dead son and cried into his metal hands.

Audio: "Better"

http://512words.blogspot.com

Music: "FoDorchestrastrings" by queeniemusic, licensed under Creative Commons from ccMixter.

The hackers listening to this podcast will have noticed that the audio file names don't always correspond to the actual story titles. In many cases, I fill out the blog post template before I've finished writing the story, so I just make up a working title for the audio link.

This week's filename is a tribute to my friend Raj, who visited Portland last weekend and reminded me to watch those plosives when recording. He's read everything that William Gibson has written, and his email username in college was "cybe." I fully expect him to be the first in line when direct neural interfaces to the Internet become available.

IFOWONRO

Not coincidentally, this week's story shares its title with the Jonathan Coulton song about the dangers of excessive cybernetic enhancement:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f2eZtAnzWA

The backstory for this world includes some kind of Skynet-esque apocalypse and subsequent enslavement of humans--by new robot overlords, natch. Jadrew's time is a few generations later, when new superstitions have permeated human culture and made them amenable to self-inflicted oppressions.

My first draft topped 800 words, and I had to cut out some details I really liked, including an opportunity to use the word "haruspex." But one of the great things about writing short fiction is that it really forces me to come up with a succinct answer to the question "what is this story about?" and then get rid of anything that doesn't contribute to that.

I feel like I'm slowly edging up the ladder toward conscious competence. You might say I'm getting... better.

Thank you and good night!