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French to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature / description of a Near-Death Experience
French term or phrase:faire de l’Ombre à la Lumière
A peine se trouvait-il en présence des siens qu’il repartit aussitôt dans l’ailleurs, faisant soudain face à un être de lumière de forme humaine, « plus lumineux que la lumière. Il portait une longue chevelure brune jusqu’aux épaules, un peu à la Nazaréenne. Son corps était vêtu de blanc. ******Il faisait de l’Ombre à la Lumière****** et déversait des torrents d’Amour, de bonheur. J’étais noyé dans la Joie, la Béatitude, impossible à décrire. »
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A description (in a biography) of an out-of-body experience. The person had just "died" (he had polio and a fever of 41.6C!) and been "transported" to the ceiling from where he was able to look down on his own inert body and his friends and family gathered around. One of his "visions" was of this Christ-like figure dressed in white. But I'm completely stumped by "...faisant de l’Ombre à la Lumière". How exactly does one "faire" such a thing? In other words, what is the meaning of the verb here?
The person speaking here is originally from Brittany. A life-long atheist, he is eventually converted to Christianity - but quite some time after this NDE
I appreciate that this term may or may not have religious/spiritual connotations of which I'm unaware - and would be very grateful if anyone could shed any light on this! Many thanks!
thanks so much ormiston and everyone else for the enlightening (!) suggestions and comments! This was really hard to grade, but in the end I stuck to my decision to avoid referring to shadow, not because it isn't an accurate reflection of the intended meaning, but simply because I feel (perhaps wrongly!) that it doesn't work quite so well in EN in this context. 4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer
It seems there is a disconnect between what the French conveys to native French speakers and how native English speakers might want to re-interpret the French with known English idioms (turning night into day, darkness into light,shining brighter than the sun etc) in order to make it flow. Que faire?
They aren't especially weird in English, but definitely unusual in French where they would be used that way in religious texts. So I do agree there is a strong religious and evne mystical undertone here.
My interpretation is that the author's intention is to use Light and Darkness as the one Light and the one Darkness, i.e. Jesus is the Light of the World (the one and only), and Darkness, here, signifies its opposite (i.e. everything that is not). The author is also using capitals to emphasise the symbolism. In addition, it is usual practice to refer to the characteristics, or nature, of Jesus, God, etc (as divine) using capital letters (definitely in English).
thinking of San Juan de la Cruz (St. John of the Cross) and his "brighter than the midday sun" image, radiant light of Christ, the midday sun pales in comparison sort of thing
Of course Carol, what a fool am I! Knew I'd seen that phrase somewhere! Yes, so back to actual sentence. Light is eclipsed but in the sense of being brighter, not to shade or shadow.
I was thinking of eclipsed in the sense of "better than" or, in this case, "brighter than" (as suggested far above, by Sandra) rather than "overshadowed". I wouldn't actually be able to use "brighter than light" as this comes a couple of lines above (plus lumineux que la lumière), but that is how I see it: outdoing/outshining Light
sorry to arrive so late at this. Good suggestions and quite liked idea of eclipsed light but on further cogitation think not. Eclipses and shadows have negative connotations and all these NDE seem very positive experiences. My reading is similar to ormiston, "brighter than Light itself".
it is indeed about an out-of-body experience, but I'm convinced that this particular passage is about Light rather than Death/Darkness - more the light at the end of the tunnel. In this case, the light - a tiny speck to start with - grew bigger and bigger and brighter and brighter... as well as the Christlike figure that WAS Light. And this is classed as a NEAR-death experience, in other words, I don't believe (though I'm not totally sure) that he actually died, even though he appeared (to his family) to fall into a deep coma. Before this, he had been going through a very grim time, hence, in my eyes, "the light at the end of the tunnel", both literally and metaphorically, if you take the NDE literally. And I too am extremely impressed with the 1000 wph! Gosh, if only...!
yes, I'm quite won over by both "outshone the light" and "eclipsed..." But these are both yet to be posted as answers, although Joseph's explanation gets pretty close. But I THINK I'm still going to try to avoid any mention of shadow/overshadow, although I love the image of the multiple shadows produced by floodlighting... :)
Wow, 1,000 words an hour, that's a coalmine production rate, indeed! I am pretty sure I could never do that. Don't you like it though, when, covered in coal dust, you emerge from the pit into the light, only to happen upon these little literary puzzles from capitalising maniacs' books, where everything revolves around understanding if the author really made a lame pun or is just being plain silly? ;-)
This has to do with death (or out of body experience)and any answer needs to address this. Personally, I am in awe of this sort of translation, being a mere legal scratcher at the coalface at 1,000 words an hour. It's way beyond my understanding!
Your "outshone the light" (or even "outshone Light") seems to me to express quite rightly what is said in French.
Bourth (X)
Not sure how "physical" this should be
21:46 Jan 11, 2011
but I can't help thinking of football matches .... you know, when a game is played in daylight but it starts getting dim and they turn the floodlights on, so every player has multiple shadows. That's really just setting the scene, for it gets more complicated than just multiple real, physical shadows ... Here, I think, things are taken a step further and, metaphorically at least, it is the (natural) light that is given a shadow by this supernatural light. Ormiston's "outshine the light" has just popped up while I'm writing - that's what I'm getting at. It's not a physical object that is casting a shadow (by whichever light) but light itself, a "dense" light if you will which is "outshone" by a Brighter Light, so light itself is like a physical object casting a shadow when bathed in this Greater Light. "He (His Light) made light itself cast a shadow".
that's a lovely clear explanation - just what I needed, with the clarification of that "à".
re the capitals, I was perhaps being a little slipshod here, but have stuck religiously to them in the target text. As you say, they are uncharacteristic, and the author IS making a spiritual point here (and in much of the text).
Also, one of the chapters (funnily enough, not this one!) is actually called "De l’Ombre à la Lumière", and I think I've let this colour my thinking - ie, confuse the issue here - especially as Darkness and Light are two very recurrent themes!
It can't be "turn the shadow into light". That would have been "faisant de l'ombre la lumière" without the critical "à". About this capital thing, I can see why you feel there is a reference behind the author's capitalising of Ombre and Lumière. But as I just said the French text forbids your interpretation. In addition, the author also capitalises "Amour" "Joie" and "Béatitude", so we can assume that 1) he is a capital letters maniac or 2) with all these un-French capitals, he wants to infuse his text with a general sense of spirituality.
By the way, IMO, you can translate into English exactly as if your source text said "Il éclipsait la Lumière et déversait des torrents d'Amour". It's just that the author apparently couldn't resist making a jeu de mots and substituted "éclipser la lumière" (which is possible) with "faire de l'ombre à la lumière" (which is, I think, impossible).
I like the idea of "eclipsing the darkness" in the sense of being better/brighter than, but will avoid "cast a shadow" as I feel this ends up saying the opposite to what is probably intended. I think the idea generally is "brighter than bright" with not a shadow in sight!
this expression seems to be fairly widely used, and I had understood it - perhaps incorrectly - as meaning something along the lines of "from Darkness to the Light".
If this is the case, then I'm merely looking for a plausible translation for "faisant" here. Marian's "Turning" (or something similar) seems to fit well here, but, in the light of Sandra's disagree, am I missing something?
"Faire de l'ombre à" means "overshadow" in a literal or figurative sense. The meaning here is that the Christ figure is so bright that it makes the light itself seem dark, or at least dull. There is also a sort of pun with the fact that "faire de l'ombre à" means "éclipser"= "cast a shadow upon" but also "be better than". I'll leave it to you native speakers to put in good English but Tony, you should definitely post an answer.
The luminosity ("plus lumineux que la lumière") cast a shadow (instead of creating shadows of other objects). This seems counter-intuitive, but after all it's an out-of-body near-death experience.
EDIT: I realize now that this is just about what Tony said, only he said it better. And yes Tony, you *should* post your suggestion, as Sandra suggests above.
thanks indeed for that! In this context (did I post enough...?) this is more likely to be vice versa, ie, "casting light on the darkness", which I hadn't thought of myself! Great idea!
peer agreement (net): +4
