Les Heures de traduction

I’m reading a French novel about work* (awful work, as it happens), in French.

Don’t be impressed: it’s slow going because my language skills aren’t all they might be.

I may enjoy a good run of a sentence or two where I get the meaning without too much effort.

But mostly I sit with the narrative, the words, and consequently the feelings that they trigger, for very much longer than if I were reading the novel in English.

It’s a completely different experience to my usual one of skimming across a text, getting the gist. Of effortlessly – perhaps carelessly – constructing meaning from words and idioms already known and embedded.

In my attempts to make sense of what I’m reading, I sometimes inadvertently create different meanings. I get a different sort of gist: it may not be exactly what the author meant, but it’s an interesting and valid alternative that makes sense to me.

I would quite like to get to the end and learn the outcome, but I can’t hurry there.

Instead, I’m taking it all at the pace it requires. And because of that, and because I’ve put myself in the position of approaching it differently, my engagement with the content of the novel is richer and deeper.

Of course I’m now going to draw parallels with how you might think about your career and its possible redesign …

Look from somewhere different. Look differently. Engage differently. Be conscious. Don’t assume you know. Get comfortable with not knowing. Sit a while with the unclear, with the partially understood. Pay attention. Leave the habitual behind. Keep your interpretations fluid. Don’t over-value the literal. Run alongside the unfamiliar, the incomplete, the loosely grasped meanings which might lead you somewhere that your brain wouldn’t have otherwise gone.

Get a career coach to help you translate the challenging passages.

* 'Les Heures souterraines', by Delphine de Vigan

Photo: Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash