Merci mille fois mon ami!

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

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

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

Making a thread to move stuff to.

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)

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

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

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?

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.

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

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"

"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.

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

I'm from England, and nor do I.

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

*cough* And yet - close your eyes, and imagine Lawson's interviewing Steve Squyres...

http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_query=Mark%20Lawson

Come on Phil we know that in every day speech you would actually say;

I'm going out for a ride on my Skidoo...ay?
I'm going out for a tourtiere....ay?
I'm going out for a Molson's .... ay?

Yah, that sounds a-boot right!

(Nothin' but love for our Canadian bros...I'm from Montana, same difference!)

I'm from Illinois originally, and the Illinois and Ohio rural accents are almost identical. Ohio, if anything, has a little more of the tiny touch of that Indiana-Kentucky soft-northern-edge-of-southern accent than Illinois does.

I am, therefore, very familiar with the speech and accent pattern of a small-town Ohio boy like Neil Armstrong. He, as I also do, tends to add the occasional "a" as an almost unpronounced coda between "for" and almost any other word or phrase. More of a slight hesitation than a fully sounded vowel.

In the same speech pattern, the phrase "For a good time, call Jan at 123-555-1212" starts out sounding very much like "Fer-a good time"... with the "a" so lost that, without context, you might actually hear "Fer good time" with the briefest of stutters between the first two words. (In this case, "for" is pronounced about two-thirds of the way between the long "or" sound and the short "er" sound. Might better be spelled "foehr" or even "fur".)

All I can really say, though, is that I can insert an "a" into the famous quote, have it match the flat Midwest accent and speech pattern, *and* have it match the exact timing of the famous quote. It's a natural way for me to say it. So, while I won't swear the "a" was staticked out, I'll say that Neil *could* have said it and have been consistent with his own accent and with what we hear in the transmission.

-the other Doug

Agree with oDoug. That was a better explanation than I could articulate, but I swear there is enough room in the interval for a subtle "a"

The other tip-off, for me, is to compare it to how Neil says "for mankind." In the first iteration, "for a man," while the subtle "a" isn't really heard, there is an obvious fractional separation between the words. In the second iteration, "for mankind," there is no separation or even fractional pause between the closing "r" of "for" and the opening "m" of "mankind".

-the other Doug

Interesting analysis here.

Excerpt:
‘(Step) for man’ spectrogram – showing the rise in pitch (in blue) during the word ‘man’ (underlined section shows continuity of phoneme underlined)
Click to view attachment

‘(Leap) for mankind’ spectrogram – showing the drop in pitch (in blue) during the word ‘mankind’ (underlined section shows continuity of phoneme underlined)
Click to view attachment

Ultimately...we all knew what he meant!

So, as the topic is also now regarding the "a" I can post this without been OT:

One small step for clarity
Researcher discovers that Neil Armstrong had not only the RIGHT IDEA, but the RIGHT WORDS
By MARK CARREAU Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 3, 2006, 11:46AM
High-tech detective work apparently has found the missing "a" in one of the most famous phrases ever spoken.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong's first words from the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, now can be confidently recast, according to the research, as "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
It is the more dramatic and grammatically correct phrasing that Armstrong, 76, has often said was the version he transmitted to NASA's Mission Control for broadcast to worldwide television.
With the technology of the 1960s, however, his global audience heard his comment without the "a," making it "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
The discrepancy has been widely debated for years by historians, academics and fans of space travel, with the "a" sometimes appearing in parentheses in government documents and Armstrong being listed on unofficial Web sites as being guilty of a momentous flub.
The missing word was found this month in a software analysis of Armstrong's famous phrase by Peter Shann Ford, a Sydney, Australia-based computer programmer. Ford's company, Control Bionics, specializes in helping physically handicapped people use their nerve impulses to communicate through computers.
On Thursday, Ford and Auburn University historian James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented the findings to Armstrong and others in a meeting at the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. They repeated the presentation at NASA's Washington headquarters, which has long backed Armstrong's version of the phrasing.
"I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford's analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful," Armstrong said in a statement. "I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word."
According to Ford, Armstrong spoke, "One small step for a man ... " with the "a" lasting a total of 35 milliseconds, 10 times too quickly to be heard."
The "a" was transmitted, though, and can be verified in an analysis using Canadian sound-editing software called GoldWave, Ford said.
Theories abound
Critics have suggested that Armstrong either botched a missive written for him by a government official ahead of his lunar step or that the poor wording was a sign of his lack of awareness of its significance.
The Web site www.slipups.com notes, "Mr. Armstrong's quote left out that ever important letter 'a'. His quote, 'One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind' should have been 'One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.' Without it he basically said 'One small step for mankind; one giant leap for mankind.' "
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia of sorts, states in an entry on Armstrong that "for some reason the 'a' was never spoken."
However, Armstrong told biographer Hansen that he composed the phrase during the six hours and 40 minutes between his drama-tinged landing and the time he and Apollo 11 crewmate Buzz Aldrin emerged from their lander, Eagle, to walk on the moon.
In the 2005 book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, Armstrong told Hansen that others have pointed out that he can often be heard dropping the vowels from his speech in his radio transmissions.
"It doesn't sound like there was time for the word to be there," Armstrong said in the book. "On the other hand, I didn't intentionally make an inane statement, and ... certainly the 'a' was intended, because that's the only way the statement makes any sense.
"So I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it wasn't said — although it might actually have been."
Roger Launius , who chairs the space history division at the Air and Space Museum, was among those who heard the experts' presentations this week.
"In the overall scheme of world history, it's probably not that significant. But it's nice to know that what he thought he said, he actually did say, and that because of the nature of the electronic and the communications systems of the time, it just did not get through," said Launius, a former NASA historian.
NASA reviewing findings
NASA spokesman David Mould said he has asked NASA's own audio analysts to review Ford's findings.
Ford began his detective work two weeks ago after a bicycle ride in Ohio. As he rested, he reflected on a favorite topic from his days as a medical student: the Apollo 11 moon landing.
"When they started in talking about the phrase ... I thought that was pretty stupid," Ford recalled. "They just put a man on the moon, why worry about an 'a?' Later, I thought Armstrong was such a good pilot, so precise, it's unlikely he would actually screw up a line."
Ford's interest was fueled as well by his work as a Cable News Network anchorman more than two decades ago, when his duties included news coverage of NASA.
He used his computer to download the audio recording of Armstrong's words and analyzed the speech pattern with the GoldWave software.
In the graphic tracing, he found a signature for the missing "a," evidence it was spoken and transmitted. Ford then checked First Man and found Hansen's account of Armstrong's historic step, as well as the astronaut's explanation. The account matched what he had found with the GoldWave analysis.
Ford contacted Hansen and compiled his findings in a scientific paper.
"It was meant for all mankind, and it's important to have it correct," Hansen said. "It's a concise, eloquent statement for the ages at a unique milestone for our species."
mark.carreau@chron.com

He should have said something like

"I Neil Armstrong, a humble man from Earth, step forth onto the Moon, representing all of humankind".

or something.....

Or...

"ok we made it here, Buzz, I sure hope the ascent engine works....."


he he he.

OK, now YOU translate this to French