On Sun, 11 Jul 2010, SA wrote:
>> It was the "inscribe ... within the horizon" phrasing. It's like
>> hearing someone talk Cultural Studies on a TV talk show.
>
> No! It's exactly the opposite!!! I've complained about this exact thing
> before on this list. In French, "inscribe...within the horizon," is just
> ordinarily good, educated speech. It only sounds like Cultural Studies to us
> because when French theorists originally got translated into English, such
> formulations were given literal translations, which the Cult Studs then
> picked up and incorporated into an extremely awkward and pretentious English.
> It's only in English that it sounds so pretentious - because it's awkward in
> *English* and we associate it with anglophone Cult Studs!
I totally agree. But although there are some grievous cases of literal translation, I think there is also a problem even with the most natural translations, such as the one you made. In a romance language, latinate words sound natural, and combine naturally, and aren't unnaturally long. Import their obvious cognates into an anglo-saxon based language and they sound, well, like Latin.
One of the funny Aha experiences in learning languages was realizing that most non-English dictionaries don't supply etymologies because the normal case is obvious. The French just assume their words all come from Latin and if they want to know the roots, they look in a Latin dictionary.
Besides, everything sounds cute when said in French :-)
Michael