Hey all! I know we have some francophones on the board, and I thought I'd pick their brains.

For work (I have a job in my field!), we're transcribing a bunch of letters from the era of the house (1790-1840). Since I'm the only person who knows French, to me has fallen the task of translating all the bits and pieces of letters which were written in French.

I've got this PS from 1818 and while I can get most of it (the handwriting doesn't help!), I have absolutley no idea what a "voiture de pain" might be.

Also, if anyone's willing to read the whole transcription and my poor translation, please to be PMing me.

Crazy how much language does and doesn't change in 200 years...

Vulture of Pain. *nod* It was a particularly gruesome pet of the French aristocracy. They'd threaten the servants along these lines with: "I'm gonna sic the vulture on you! And not the nice Vulture of Cuddly Hugs! Uh uh. This time it's gonna be the VULTURE OF PAIN!"

*giggles* You win!

Bread van! Or, as it's 1818, bread cart. As in, cart that takes bread around to be sold, rather than cart made of bread.

(Or I could be talking out of my hat.)

the full sentence:

quote:

votre Prévoyante bonté, en remplissant la voiture de Pain et D’Excellent Vin a rendu nos repas d’auberge très comfortable.

Ah, so I was talking out of my hat, then.

My highschool french would translate that as:

quote:

your good Prevoyant, and fill the car with bread and excellent wine to render our lunch of eggplant very comfortable.

I'm totally correct, aren't I?

Hmm.

Super Péné comes and ... gives a hand..

Ok...

Send me your stuff or post it here.

I definitely can help you.

voiture à pain : it seems to be the vehicule where they put bread to be given to population... but can be mistaken.
Will be searching.

How many time do you have for this research cause i'll be off for 2 days this week end.

Péné

quote:

Originally posted by Mrs. Tongster:
My highschool french would translate that as:

quote:

your good Prevoyant, and fill the car with bread and excellent wine to render our lunch of eggplant very comfortable.

I'm totally correct, aren't I?

I thought an auberge was a hotel or an inn, not an aubergine!

I would translate as:
"By filling the carriage with bread and excellent wine, your generous foresight made our meal at the inn very comfortable."

*wonders if that makes sense as an English sentence*

I know what I mean. Prévoyante = far-sighted, bonté = kindness, goodness or generousity, and I would say that "voiture de pain" is just part of the sentence: "filling the carriage with bread".

I am also talking out of my hat, though.

quote:

Originally posted by aisha:
I would say that "voiture de pain" is just part of the sentence: "filling the carriage with bread".

Yes! Cutting those words off is a red herring, once you've seen the whole sentence.

bet they still did have bread vans, though, somewhere in 1818

aisha has nailed it.

I assumed that "voiture de pain" was a phrase of some kind from the 18th c.

I like Aisha's translation. Thanks all!

Pfah too late, but if you need any more help I'll be willing do some random translations.

What aisha said.

(except there's a mistake in the French sentence : it's either "notre repas d'auberge très confortable" - single meal, single inn - or "nos repas d'auberge très confortables" - multiple meals, multiple inns)

I'm totally willing to read the whole thing, if that can help.

I was just going to say that context is everything, but I see that some other have already done the translation. Voiture de pain, which I wasn't sure meant something specific in 1818, becomes something totally different in context.

Hooray for all the help!

There's plenty of correspondence between the Madisons and the Hyde de Neuvilles, not to mention Montelezun, so I'm sure there will be more translation issues in the future. I'll just add them here.