Random acts of French Options

[Paul Fjeld]

C'est une petite étape pour un homme, un saut géant pour l'humanité.

Merci mille fois mon ami!

Edit: forgot how to spell friend in french...

[climber]

C'est une petite étape pour un homme, un saut géant pour l'humanité.

Un petit pas pour un homme, un bond de géant pour l'humanité.

[Paul Fjeld]

Non, non, non! Oui?? I 'ave to get a cigarette. Where is ze bank. Ze left one...

[djellison]

Making a thread to move stuff to.

[volcanopele]

Un petit pas pour un homme, un bond de géant pour l'humanité.

Je ne parle pas francais. Je suis americain.

(and no, I'm not going look up an alt codes for accent marks I missed, live with it ,and yes, I know what you said, mind the humor. I completely wasted my time with four years of French in high school, my first girlfriend was French for pete's sake, and yes, sadly, the above is the best I can do at this time)

[ElkGroveDan]

Un petit pas pour un homme, un bond de géant pour l'humanité.

Non. "Un petit pas pour _ hommes, un bond de géant pour l'humanité."

[nprev]

<sigh>...Unfortunately, it's all Greek to me , but I understand that sentence at least. Right on.

[volcanopele]

hmm, how would one translate that phrase? The way climber put it was how Armstrong meant to say it, but when I read ElkGroveDan's version, it sounds like "One small step for men...". I'm sure the better half of the human population would not be very happy about that... Does French have a similar word for "man", in otherwords the pre-PC version of humanity?

[ElkGroveDan]

The problem Jason is that the way he inadvertently used "man" in English in fact does mean "humanity." And that's one of the dangers of trying to carry over grammatical acrobatics into translations. I'm pretty sure there is not a derivation of "man" in French that means mankind or humanity, which is why I chose "men," in my view the closest thing to demonstrate the awkwardness of his verbal slip. In hindsight it probably needed an article preceding it (tous les hommes?), but damned if I would choose the correct one. I once spoke fluent French but that was 43 years ago when I barely knew how to read and write in either language. I look forward to Gilles' more informed opinion on this.

[climber]

You know what? I'm watching right now the original footage on french TV of the moon walk. Depressurisation.
Jason is right, translation is in Neil's spirit but this is the way it is told here in France.
Back on topic, Dan. We distinguish "un homme" (a man) from "l'Homme" (with a capital H because without capital H it means this man) which means men and women.
I have trouble to tell the difference between Humanité and "espèce humaine" (human species) and how it is related to mankind but I'm not a languist

[volcanopele]

Well, given the fact the "a" was not transmitted (or Neil misspoke, which is it again?), "man" was taken to mean something similar to people or humanity, in pre-political correctness-speak. If you translate it as people, then my old French dictionary, which I don't believe I have opened in 8 years, translate that to "gens"

[climber]

"Gens" doesn't work here, it really lacks power in the context, it's a more regular (basic) word for "people" (I guess).
So we could say, "Un petit pas pour l'Homme" (skipping the "a" as pronounced by Neil) taken as the "human specie" while "humanité" would mean the actual people on Earth.
That's my take but I'm fluent in French... not in English.

[ElkGroveDan]

Well unfortunately I'm from California so I don't speak English very well either.

[djellison]

I'm from England, and nor do I.

[Phil Stooke]

I'm going out for a walk...
I'm going out for a pizza...
I'm going out for a drink...

Try saying these lines unselfconsciously as in everyday speech. If I say any of these things, I don't precisely sound out each word. Walk, drink, pizza, yes, they are important. But the 'for a' is likely to be spoken quickly and the sounds run together. I can try to give a phonetic approximation to the sound - "f'ra" or "f'uh" or just "fuh". But it doesn't matter how I pronounce it, what matters is what I mean by it. I'm sick of hearing about what the statement sounded like. We know what he meant, and what he meant IS what he said regardless of the way it sounded. Take back the 'a'!

Phil