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French to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature
French term or phrase:peau d\'âne
After correcting and translating passages of a research article a first time, I am currently correcting a second version where one of the paper's authors has reinserted a bizarre translation (shagreen skin) of a term that I indicated in the first version did not have a similar level of recognition in English (peau d'âne). It refers to Perrault's fairytale about the princess who wears a "peau d'âne" while in hiding from her father who wants to marry her. I am stumped as to what I could possible suggest as the final readers are management researchers!!!
Explanation: As suggested in the discussion area, on the basis that "contemplating their donkey skin/shagreen skin", which the authors have suggested adding to this text, is intended as a reference not to Perrault's story La Peau d'âne but to Balzac's novel La Peau de chagrin, the title of which has been translated as The Wild Ass's Skin and recently also as The Shagreen Skin. In that novel, the "shagreen skin" is a talisman that grants the owner's desires but in doing so shrinks and hastens his death, so the skin represents his life span. Contemplating it is therefore a metaphor for contemplating one's mortality: when the skin has dwindled to nothing, its owner (Raphaël) dies. The only way to prolong his life is to refrain from desire, so perhaps what the authors have in mind is that older businessmen slow down, expend less energy, procrastinate, because they are aware that the time they have left is limited.
Since the metaphor itself, though probably comprehensible to most educated French people, is unlikely to mean anything to the target readers of the English text, it is better to express the concept behind it.
And I can't resist quoting this comment from a forum in which someone reports that donkey skin is used in Chinese medicine:
"La peau de l'âne est très convoitée en Chine En médecine traditionnelle chinoise, on utilise la peau de l'âne pour fabriquer une gélatine, l'ejiao. Ce remède entre dans la formule de drogues et de cosmétiques, générant un important trafic de peaux d'ânes africains depuis l'Afrique vers la Chine, et menaçant la survie de l'espèce."
"Peau d'âne" as a colloquial term for a diploma is, I think, fairly modern. It's in the Trésor, with an example from 1947, but it's not in Littré with that meaning. It seems to be quite widely used. Whether it was coined to denigrate the holder as an "âne" I don't know. But Littré is worth a look on this, because donkey skin or ass's skin seems to have used a lot in the past:
"Peau d'âne, peau de l'âne préparée. 'Comme la peau d'âne est très dure et très élastique, on l'emploie utilement à différents usages, on en fait des cribles, des tambours et de très bons souliers' (Buffon) [...] Peau de tambour, peau d'âne tendue sur un tambour. [...] On dit aux garçons paresseux qui s'étirent les membres : La peau de tambour sera à bon marché, les ânes s'étendent." https://www.littre.org/definition/peau
And the Trésor gives drum as another meaning of "peau d'âne", quoting Victor Hugo: "le tohu-bohu habituel d'instruments, cuivre et peau d'âne mêlés" http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/peau
Just an idea (that's probably wrong), but perhaps a diploma might have been colloquially referred to in the past (when it would have been written on parchment or vellum) as "un peau". If so, then the "âne" might have been meant to insultingly refer to the student who had been awarded the diploma, rather than to the animal whose hide was used to make it.
I hadn't read the earlier postings. My feeling is that the background is that the first degree awards were written on vellum and somewhere along the way a pejorative "ass skin" sense was acquired. Here's one comment "par dérision, diplôme universitaire ne prouvant qu'un faux savoir" from a not very reliable source https://www.mathematiquesfaciles.com/forum/lire.php?num=15&m...
In Michelle's context it reads like "resting on one's laurels", "Road warrior" but they don't tie in.
Yes, colloquially in US written Eng., at least, a diploma is a "sheepskin." I assume this originates in the former custom of inscribing diplomas on sheepskins, before they became vegan. The sheepskin frequently is an accoutrement for dunces.
By the way, if we're collecting possible meanings of "peau d'âne", it can mean a diploma, and it has an archaic meaning (still current in the nineteenth century) of a fairy tale: "On appelle Contes de peau d'asne, De petits contes inventez pour l'amusement des enfans" (Acad. 1694).
Where did you get the "well-educated dunce" meaning? I didn't know that.
A "peau d'âne" is, roughly speaking, a well-educated dunce. That I could see as a pejorative way of referring to other academics whose work one disagreed with. And isn't Perrault's version more a case of (deliberately) hiding one's light under a bushel? Also maybe worth thinking of https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peau_d'âne_(film,_1970) and Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. Context is all.
This is just a thought-exercise from the very little context provided and fully derived from Charles' very sound previous insights.
I am just guessing that the original phrasing might be understood such that as far as the owner-manager is old and has been around the company for so many years, older owner-managers are most likely the ones to be chosen for the [cluster] -a weird, "lifestyler", procrastinated cluster- and so these old owner-managers can just sit around [in the cluster] as they wished spinning out time until the end [watching their own lives pass by...].
I just wonder it this makes just any sense within the broader context -or whether this might help at all to come up with a fair solution to the original phrasing. Saludos!
Dr Johnson (1755) lists it as "shagreen" when it means "the skin of a kind of fish, or skin made rough in imitation of it", though he says that it "should be written chagrin". He lists "chagrin" with the meaning "ill humour; vexation; fretfulness, peevishness", adding that "it is pronounced shagreen".
My Chambers dictionary states that the term "chagrin"(French, and how the English term used to be spelt) derives from a Turkish word for a horse's rump.
I would like to attribute you the points if possible. Would you like to copy your last discussion answer and submit it? Thanks again for your help with this truly weird terminology!
So "contemplating their donkey skin/shagreen skin" really does mean contemplating their mortality: contemplating how long they have left. Every time Raphaël looks at his, it's shrunk a bit more. The only way to spin it out is to slow down, so older businessmen slow down.
"Mortality" fits the Balzacien metaphor: mortality and the assertion of will and desire (which may be the connection with the Procrastinator type). The "shagreen" skin in the novel explicitly represents Raphaël's life, that is, the life he has left. By the end, although he's not old, the skin is as small as "la feuille d'une pervenche" — a periwinkle leaf. He shows it to Pauline: "Ceci est un talisman qui accomplit mes désirs, et représente ma vie. Vois ce qu'il m'en reste." The problem is that desire consumes his life and he can't stop desiring. And such is his desire for Pauline that he consummates his passion for her and dies. Perhaps businessmen should become Buddhists.
Hi Victoria. Thanks for your suggestion. Since we talk about company mortality a lot in business, I am probably going to go with it as I think it won’t trouble the readers like a literal translation or either term would ;)
Hello Michelle, all I meant to say was that donkey skin seems to be recognized as the subject of the Perreault story in English translation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkeyskin Someone else demonstrated the same point by citing another English translation of the Perreault. I deleted my answer when I found these discussion entries and realized you're looking for an English metaphor equivalent to the metaphorical peau d'ane, not a translation. I don't know any. (I was hoping the context would reveal it was "wolf in sheep's clothing" but of course it doesn't. A different fable.) Sorry for the misunderstanding! Instead of mortality, maybe "increasing (or advancing) infirmities" or "transitory status."
I like the idea of your new suggested translation; while "mortality" strikes me as being a bit strong, I'm afraid I don't for the moment have an alternative to propose.
I received notification of this - two, in fact! Here is the link: http://www.proz.com/kudoz/6535477. You should be able to use the "support request" link at the bottom of the page to get it removed.
Thanks for all your comments. I am reassured to see that I am not the only native English speaker who finds the reference obscure. I do not agree with Rachel on this matter as her reference, like those I found, is tied to the literal and not the figurative usage which I have specified here. The question is indeed confusing as the term is used and translated by a non-native speaker outside of the context I am able to provide. Whether the writer meant to reference peau d'âne (version 1) ou peau de chagrin (version 2 of the same document) has not been clarified despite the request I made. @mrrafe I would be interested to see what you suggest for the phrase as used by Perrault. Your entry has been deleted from what I can tell. I do not believe I received a notification of the duplicate entry and have not been able to close it unfortunately.
All of which, by the way, goes to show that (in my opinion) The Shagreen Skin is a bad choice of translation for the title of Balzac's novel La Peau de chagrin.
Etymologically, yes, but as noted in the source you've quoted it has referred to sharkskin in English since the seventeenth century, and in 1828 Noah Webster defined it as "A kind of grained leather prepared of the skin of a fish, a species of Squalus [dogfish shark]" ( http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/shagreen ). Merriam-Webster has it as "untanned leather covered with small round granulations and usually dyed green" or specifically "the rough skin of various sharks and rays when covered with small close-set tubercles" ( https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shagreen ). In French, however, chagrin, from which shagreen is of course derived, is still defined as an equine leather:
"Espèce de cuir grenu, préparé avec la peau de la croupe du mulet, de l'âne ou du cheval et utilisé en reliure et en maroquinerie de luxe" http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/chagrin
Yes, I was overstating the case; it was a bit presumptuous to generalise from my own ignorance :-) I must admit I had never heard of shagreen.
However, even those who have will be confused by it here, I think, all the more so since from what I can gather it now tends to refer to sharkskin.
As I've said, I'm convinced that Michelle's authors have suggested adding this reference to shagreen skin because they're thinking of Balzac's La Peau de chagrin, which is pretty well known in France, and have looked it up in the dictionary. I'm familiar with the novel but I didn't immediately connect "shagreen skin" with it. When I studied it at university years ago there was a Penguin Classics translation called "The Wild Ass's Skin", and I see that quite recently Oxford Classics published it under the same title in what they claim to be the first new translation for 35 years. I also find another recent translation online entitled "The Shagreen Skin". Balzac obviously chose the title for the double meaning of "chagrin".
At any rate, apart from those who are fairly well-read or did French lit. at university, I think few English speakers will make sense of the allusion.
Thanks to your ideas and your help in understanding the reference which was not clear to me despite having researched the tale, I have come up with: They may adopt different strategies due to their awareness of their own mortality. I think that this is a compromise that may fit and help the poor management people avoid this linguistic conundrum entirely!!!
It may be that I am stuck on finding a new bizarre "skin" reference where previously there was "peau d'âne" that I strongly suggested removing. I do like the catskin idea as a back-up for my simple recommendation to avoid any such reference! Since something similar was added, I decided I needed help in finding a figurative equivalent... hence my question using the original phrase
The peau d'âne in Perrault's tale is used, as you say, by the princess to disguise herself from her father, who wishes to marry her. There are English versions of similar folktales with rabbit skin and catskin. It's a story about incest. What could that situation possibly have to do with this context? The mind boggles...
But "peau de chagrin" might possibly be relevant, given that in Balzac's novel the skin magically grants the owner's wishes, but in doing so gradually shrinks and consumes his energies.
"Shagreen skin", which no English-speaking reader will understand, must be alluding to Balzac's La Peau de chagrin. If that's what they have in mind it puts quite a different complexion on it. But it's still going to need to be adapted; I doubt many management researchers are Balzac readers.
There is unfortunately no French entry. This part of the text was written in English and the translation of the French expression was tacked on. As the context is unhelpful (the rest of the article is about management research) I wondered if anyone had encountered it in a more literary context. https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault11.html
The text looks like it's been translated by someone whose first language is not English - "a higher probability to be in Lifestyler or Procrastinator cluster" "Shagreen skin" is "peau de chagrin", which has nothing to do with "peau d'âne".
This is going to call for a creative solution, and it's essential to be able to gauge what they're trying to express with this allusion, which is not clear to me from the English version you've quoted.
Unfortunately I do not believe it is at all helpful: The owner-manager's age and seniority in the firm seem to play in an important and indirect role in the clusters' composition, as the older owner-managers have a higher probability to be in Lifestyler or Procrastinator cluster, contemplating their donkey skin/shagreen skin. It is a literal translation that has no meaning to me...
Could you provide the surrounding context from the article? (ie where the phrase is used)
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Answers
21 hrs confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
mortality
Explanation: As suggested in the discussion area, on the basis that "contemplating their donkey skin/shagreen skin", which the authors have suggested adding to this text, is intended as a reference not to Perrault's story La Peau d'âne but to Balzac's novel La Peau de chagrin, the title of which has been translated as The Wild Ass's Skin and recently also as The Shagreen Skin. In that novel, the "shagreen skin" is a talisman that grants the owner's desires but in doing so shrinks and hastens his death, so the skin represents his life span. Contemplating it is therefore a metaphor for contemplating one's mortality: when the skin has dwindled to nothing, its owner (Raphaël) dies. The only way to prolong his life is to refrain from desire, so perhaps what the authors have in mind is that older businessmen slow down, expend less energy, procrastinate, because they are aware that the time they have left is limited.
Since the metaphor itself, though probably comprehensible to most educated French people, is unlikely to mean anything to the target readers of the English text, it is better to express the concept behind it.
Charles Davis Spain Local time: 10:45 Specializes in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 12
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peer agreement (net): +1