(no subject)
C'est parti! Which is to say (disclaimer: possibly by horrifically misusing the expression) that I've had my first morning in the little CERHIO library, and it's just like I remember it being too. I reintroduced myself to the librarian, who is still very nice despite my nervous butchering of French, had him guide me to the database of master's theses, and got started! C'était génial! At the moment I'm "home" for lunch, because this is France and the library closes for an hour at noon, but I'll head back and continue as soon as I've finished eating and drinking my lunchtime coffee. I may have missed Prof FM, who said he was going to try and stop by and talk to me this morning, but hopefully that can happen another time.
In any case, now that I've conquered my return to the library, I'm feeling much better about life, my research, and France than I was this morning. Predictably, this morning, I was convinced that everything, but particularly my French, was total shit. I mean, that's not wrong as far as my French pronunciation under pressure goes, but never mind. What saved me and gave me the will to get out the door this morning was people being WRONG ON THE INTERNET. I've been translating things on DuoLingo, and this morning I discovered someone had corrected a bunch of my translations and made them WRONG. Not grammatically wrong, but HISTORICALLY WRONG. He had changed my translation of "Romance-speaking" to "NORMAN-speaking" with reference to the ninth-century March of Brittany, AND he changed my "Marches of Brittany" to MARSHES OF BRITTANY. You can imagine my INTERNAL HOWLS OF OUTRAGE. Yesterday, someone changed some of my other totally correct translations to things that are linguistically wrong, but seriously. MARSHES OF BRITTANY. NORMAN SPEAKING. GTFO. The thesis I'm reading right now, although fairly sound overall, has also dabbled in deepest eye-rolling bullshit in a couple of places, and apparently that gives me strength to go on. If I have to fuel my dissertation with people being WRONG ON THE INTERNET AND WRONG ABOUT THE PRIORY OF GAHARD, I guess that's what I have to do.
This entry was originally posted at http://monksandbones.dreamwidth.org/757815.html. Talk to me here or there, whichever you prefer.
In any case, now that I've conquered my return to the library, I'm feeling much better about life, my research, and France than I was this morning. Predictably, this morning, I was convinced that everything, but particularly my French, was total shit. I mean, that's not wrong as far as my French pronunciation under pressure goes, but never mind. What saved me and gave me the will to get out the door this morning was people being WRONG ON THE INTERNET. I've been translating things on DuoLingo, and this morning I discovered someone had corrected a bunch of my translations and made them WRONG. Not grammatically wrong, but HISTORICALLY WRONG. He had changed my translation of "Romance-speaking" to "NORMAN-speaking" with reference to the ninth-century March of Brittany, AND he changed my "Marches of Brittany" to MARSHES OF BRITTANY. You can imagine my INTERNAL HOWLS OF OUTRAGE. Yesterday, someone changed some of my other totally correct translations to things that are linguistically wrong, but seriously. MARSHES OF BRITTANY. NORMAN SPEAKING. GTFO. The thesis I'm reading right now, although fairly sound overall, has also dabbled in deepest eye-rolling bullshit in a couple of places, and apparently that gives me strength to go on. If I have to fuel my dissertation with people being WRONG ON THE INTERNET AND WRONG ABOUT THE PRIORY OF GAHARD, I guess that's what I have to do.
This entry was originally posted at http://monksandbones.dreamwidth.org/757815.html. Talk to me here or there, whichever you prefer.