Lost in translation

Living in a multicultural nation and working in an even more multicultural organisation, translation and its attendant problems are often at the forefront of my mind. And yet while the necessity for translation is never questioned, one thing about translation has always bugged me: why do we translate names?

For a practical example of this, simply drive southwest from Brussels and you’ll see signs directing you to “Mons” and “Bergen”. This is one and the same town, but the name is listed twice: in French and Flemish. Or drive northwest towards Lille and you’ll see signs for “Lille”, but also for “Rijsel”, which is what the locals in Flanders call it.

Now presumably there are historical reasons for why English people say “Finland” instead of “Suomi”, or why the Deutsch are referred to as “Allemands”, “Tedeschi” or “Germans” in other parts of the continent, and presumably this force of habit is the reason why, like many irrational aspects of language, it’s just something we’ve got used to and isn’t likely to change any time soon. But it still irritates me. Especially because of the inconsistency. We say “Tuscany” instead of “Toscana”, but then we manage to pronounce all the other Italian region names the same way as the Italians do. It’s not as if the originals pose pronunciation problems for non-natives, or, as is the case of the full name for Bangkok, the issue of having to draw breath several times while you try to say it.

While it may grate slightly to hear someone speaking in English and then dropping in a foreign name, with an attempt at the correct foreign pronunciation: “Yah, we spent the summer in Toscana this year”, to me it seems the only logical and respectful way to do it.

But the one I find even more bizarre is the tendency in some countries to translate people‘s names. I know several Greeks living in Brussels who, presumably for the sake of integration and convenience refer to themselves as “Georges”, when in fact their original Greek name is “Giorgios”. And once when I was teaching English in Genoa and we were discussing the royal family, I was asked a question about “Principe Carlo”. It took a good few seconds before I realised that they meant Prince Charles. No English person would dream of seriously calling the king of Spain “King John Charles”. He’s King Juan Carlos. My name is my name, and I don’t want you to change it to something more familiar to you from your own culture, thank you very much.

I am untranslatable.

Terborght

A friend had recommended the restaurant Terborght (one Michelin star) to us a while back, so when we noticed that Groupon were offering a tasting menu for two at a very attractive price we jumped at it. In fact this is the first time we’ve seen a starred restaurant using Groupon, but I guess they’re more and more keen these days to try special promotions and discounts (RestoPass, RestoDays, etc) to get customers through the door.

Here’s our menu, for those of you who can understand (or Google translate) Dutch. The only thing here we didn’t get was the ham and melon, but I could live with that.

Our first amuse-bouche was sardine and radish. Fresh and sharp and tasty.

Foie gras with onion chutney. Fine, but the foie gras was a little cold and hard.

This one was the first in a series of dishes to use a presentational novelty. A flat plate for one dish, which serves as a lid for a warm dish in a bowl underneath. Two variations on cockles.

And then one of the best selections. The chorizo “pizza” on the right was fine, but the tomato macaroon in the middle was lovely.

On to the main courses, and this was undoubtedly the highlight of the meal. It’s just tomato and shrimp, as traditional a starter as you’re likely to get in Belgium, but the use of different coloured varieties of tomato and the slightly “deconstructed” presentation, along with the quality of the ingredients made this a winner.

And of course this was just the lid, covering the selection of shrimp, egg, croutons and avocado inside.

Another course, another lid: a slice of eel with apple, meringue and balsamic blobs.

And in the bowl underneath another Belgian classic: eel in green sauce. No complaints here either, although the traditional version comes in a slightly larger portion.

Another wacky presentation for the consommé, which was covered with a crusty dome.

Once broken, the aroma of the pigeon broth wafts free, and crumbs from the dome fall in to give you something to chew on.

Oxtail with truffle and a soft-boiled egg. Probably the evening’s only failure. It looks rather unfortunate, like something that’s been dropped rather than constructed, the egg yolk smothered the flavour of the oxtail, and the truffle was lost completely.

But we were back on track with the final meat course: pheasant with endive and sprouts. Beautiful tender meat.

Unfortunately things ended on a slightly sour note (ironic, as we were at the dessert stage). Service had slowed down enormously throughout the meal, and we’d already had an interminable wait for the pheasant. It was getting late and snow was starting to fall pretty heavily, so I enquired as to how much longer the rest of the meal would take, throwing in a casual reference to our babysitter as justification. The head waiter got the impression that I was saying we had to leave ASAP, and gave me the option of skipping any remaining courses. One of the two desert courses would be ready almost immediately, whereas the other would take more time, so I told her we’d like the quick one only. We received our plates of cold, citrus-flavoured sorbets and ice cream shortly afterwards, and the bill almost immediately.

Service had been a little spotty throughout, to be honest. We’d been served by three different staff, one of whom was obviously in charge and spoke to us in English when she heard us doing so, another who spoke in Dutch (which we managed to follow), and a third who barely spoke two words to us in any language, and who plonked our plates down in front of us without any explanation as to what we were about to eat.

Still, these slips aside, it was an enjoyable meal of modern versions of Belgian classics.

Stuffed and pickled

We spent a couple of hours in the local African Museum this morning, ostensibly to visit the Spider exhibition. This was fun and high on the “Ewww!” factor for our kids, although it was interesting to note that half the fun came in trying to locate the various specimens inside their glass cases. Once spotted, there wasn’t much to see as they were all virtually immobile.

Paradoxically the traditional stuffed and embalmed animals attracted me more, mostly for reasons related to the manner of their preservation. For example, how long does it take to stuff a full-grown hippo?

The baby hippo looks disturbed/ing.

Something about the chimps’ faces was a little off.

I’m no good at reading chimps’ facial expressions, but I’d guess this one’s not too happy.

And then in the next room, a phantasmagorical collection of snakes in jars. Beautiful.

I loved not only the selection of species but the variety of poses.

Probably my favourite.

Almost eating its own tail.

Helical.

Gasping for air.

Token disgruntled frog.

 

Yes, yes, feel free to make a froggy Gangnam Style joke.

Cycling to work

Update: now with video!

I cycled to work for the first time today.

When I was a child I probably cycled more than I walked or ran. Cycling was both practical and an enjoyable activity in and of itself, and I was quite the accomplished BMX trickmaster. I guess I stopped using bikes with any regularity when I left the country. The last time I remember using it was to cycle across London whenever I wanted to get from my flat in the far East End to the centre to see a film. Certainly I didn’t use it in Italy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone cycling in Genoa.

When we came to Brussels we bought new bikes, ostensibly to use with the kids, but in reality we go out once in a blue moon, and we tend to walk/jog alongside them as there’s always one who’s small enough to require regular help of some form or another. I guess this will change over time and when they’re all big and independent enough we can go out en famille.

But today we moved office to another part of town, so instead of taking the metro I cycled. I managed it in 20 minutes, although I was puffing and slowing down considerably by the end. I’m lucky enough that my house and the new office are linked by a straight, flat section of Brussels’ “promenade verte“, a network of cycle/walking paths around Brussels, so I didn’t have to worry about traffic and could cycle in silence through forests and past lakes. This does mean that I lose about 30 minutes of reading time per day, but the physical and mental health benefits more than compensate.

Most of the ride looks like this:

Just don’t expect me to start covering myself head to toe in flourescent lycra.

Antwerp? Antweird

A visiting friend and I spent Saturday afternoon wandering the streets of Antwerp in the rain. Because that’s what you’ll get if you travel across Europe to see me for the weekend: aimless window shopping with intermittent drizzle. Anyway, we saw a few strange things, some of which I’ll post here so that you can feel like you shared in the experience, only without the dampness.

First up, a couple of cats in a pharmacy window (Erik has subsequently copyrighted the potential band name “Pharmacy Cats”). It took a few moments to establish whether they were, in fact, real cats and not a pair of those model cats with bellows inside to make it look like they were breathing, but the ear flicks and nose twitches gave them away.

Seeking shelter from the persistent precipitation we found a bar, which just happened to be a specialist gin bar with over 200 varieties available. We felt it was a little early in the day for hard liquor, so we opted for a glass of gin-flavoured beer, and then popped next door to the shop to browse through the many weird and wonderful flavour combinations. Kiwi cream gin, anyone?

Passing back through the centre we saw the staff of an Italian restaurant, finally allowed their own lunch after the tide of tourist hordes had subsided. Love the way their shirts, the table cloths and the lampshades are coordinated.

We stopped for a browse in a secondhand bookshop. I liked the idea of this one: a book to persaude you of the value of reading books. Preaching to the converted, somewhat?

I made a couple of purchases and we left, although not by this door, which as far as I could tell didn’t lead anywhere.

Tricky types, those Antwerpenaars. Maybe their freshly-elected mayor will whip them into shape?

Street theatre

This year we finally made it along to the annual Fêtes Romanes festival at Wolubilis. The idea is that the open areas around the Wolubilis cultural centre are taken over for the weekend by a programme of dance, acrobatics and street theatre. We took the kids along for a few hours on Sunday afternoon and were blessed with perfect weather. As we arrived an Australian called El Magnifico was entertaining the crowds with his blend of pogoing, flaming remote controlled cars and mild double entendres.

The kids loved it.

There then followed a show on the main stage which seemed to consist of a man beatboxing and rapping in incomprehensibly fast and garbled French for forty minutes. The children were happy to sit through it, so my wife and I took turns browsing in Cook & Book and buying snacks.

Then there was a dancer who rolled around on the floor and contorted his face and body as if he were suffering some unspeakable torment. He smiled at the end when taking a bow, so I guess he recovered ok.

There was a final show of which I didn’t get any decent shots as I was off to the side, but it was a very entertaining mixture of comedy and acrobatics, ending with a performance of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance which my three year old son sang the whole way home. There were many other shows on offer which we’d have liked to see, but we had to get home to collect child number two from scouts.

We’ll definitely try to go along next year, and maybe for both days.

Bouchéry

Had dinner in Bouchéry last night. Decided at the last minute that I couldn’t be bothered to take any photos. That maybe, just maybe I don’t need to document all my meals.

Well, I did take a photo of the menu, but only because once we’d ordered they took it away and I wanted to be able to refer to it and remind myself what was coming next.

The first two courses were the best; the last two slightly disappointing.

In the small and intimate dining room we were sat next to two middle-aged English men who spent the evening discussing the music industry in great detail. At the table across from us sat a young woman who seemed to be there for no other reason than to chat and laugh with the waitress (friend, girlfriend?), play with her phone, and occasionally take small bites from a small plate of cheese and salad. I guess she felt she had to order something to justify occupying a table.

I took a second, final photo of the restaurant’s business card, because I liked the textures.

Invasion of the Giant Sprouts

Wandering through a park in central Brussels recently I came across this:

Then I remembered: they’re specially commissioned sculptures to advertise the year-long Brusselicious festival. As with Art on Cows, artists are given a plain model and asked to decorate it any way they like, and so the park is full of varying versions of brussels sprouts, beers, mussels and a cone of fries. And they’re all for sale. It was raining and I had my 3 year old son with me so we didn’t get to go all the way around the park and see the full set, but my favourite was this railway-themed sprout.

The Expatriate

As previously noted, the places I’ve lived in haven’t tended to be the kind of places that feature as glamourous locations in big budget movies. Imagine my excitement (well, mild curiosity, perhaps) to discover that Brussels had recently been used as the location for an American action thriller, The Expatriate. Now Brussels has been used plenty of times for local productions, but this is the first time (as far as I can tell) a fairly high profile Hollywood shoot has used my adopted home, and in such a prominent fashion.

I wasn’t initially sure whether I was going to bother seeing it, as it had received only a few, pretty lukewarm reviews, and my only real interest in seeing it was the location. The last film I’d seen for solely that reason was Genova, and that didn’t turn out too well, so I wasn’t particularly excited about paying to sit there just so that I could point at the background and say “Look, there’s the Koekelberg Basilica, for a fraction of a second, blurred by the frantic camerawork!” But we ended up going along anyway, also because there isn’t much else on at the cinema at the moment.

And? Well, it was ok. As a film, it was a functional thriller. Not startlingly original, the villain is one-dimensional, it’s a little hypocritical in the usual way of American movies which try to convince you that killing people is awful, unless the hero does it in which case it’s ok for him to beat to a pulp/blow up anyone who gets in his way. But it moves quickly and efficiently through its set pieces, and the performances by Aaron Eckhart and Liana Liberato as his daughter are just good enough to keep you involved.

And as a Belgian big screen experience? Well you see quite a lot of both Brussels and Antwerp, so there are plenty of location-spotting opportunities. It’s normal for films to cheat locations and geography, but a couple of examples jumped out at me here. In one scene we see what’s very obviously a Brussels tram rolling down a recognisable Brussels street, but the scene is supposed to be taking place in Antwerp. A scene set on the steps of a courthouse was actually filmed on the steps of the stock exchange.

On the plus side the film hints (albeit only briefly) at the difficulties of the expat life, not only for wealthy Americans but also for immigrants from poorer countries. It was heartening to see the Arabic community portrayed in such a positive way when they could easily have been either villains or victims. I know that sounds like faint praise (“Congratulations on not being racist!”), but it’s still not that common in this kind of film.

But worst of all? During most of the scenes set in Antwerp, when the protagonist talks to his colleagues in the office, he talks (and they respond) in French. Did no one bother to explain to the writer that Antwerp is in Flanders?

Cover star

Browsing through a bookshop in Brussels recently, I noticed a display publicising the latest novel by Amélie Nothomb. Nothing surprising there: she’s a popular, acclaimed and very prolific writer, and I’ve really enjoyed the three of her novels I’ve read so far.

No, what struck me about the books was that a photo of her is almost always on the cover. Look, here are three of her books that I own:

How many fiction writers are regularly featured on the covers of their books? You can get alternative covers, of course, but chances are that in any given bookshop you’ll see her face quite a lot. Now some of these books are to a greater or lesser degree autobiographical, so that makes some sense, as she’s the subject matter as well as the author. But even when that’s not the case, there she is, looking mysterious, or glamourous, or smirking at you, or all three.

Why doesn’t this happen more often? Should the writer disappear completely behind the mask of their work? I guess many writers are shy or solitary types who dread having their photograph taken, but surely that doesnt apply to all of them, and why shouldn’t those more confident about publicity and marketing be allowed to present themselves and their work in a more visible way? It’s seen as perfectly normal for musicians to feature on the packaging for their albums, after all. Now, you might say that singers tend to be easier on the eye than writers, but that’s not always the case. And even if it were, why should it be, and should it matter? It’s the content that interests me, not the attractiveness of the person who produced it.