{"id":483,"date":"2010-05-21T09:44:31","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T09:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/?p=483"},"modified":"2010-10-04T16:26:19","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T16:26:19","slug":"inspecteur-rebus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/?p=483","title":{"rendered":"Inspecteur Rebus"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an effort to improve my French, I’ve been reading a few of my favourite books in translation alongside the original. It saves me from having to pick up a dictionary every time I come across a word I don’t know, and it also encourages me to try and work out what words mean myself (it’s a bit of a pain stopping and starting and switching between languages, so I try to do a paragraph or a page at a time). I’ve just finished L’appel des morts<\/i>, by Ian Rankin (also known as “The Naming of the Dead”; one of my favourite Rebus novels). This was a challenge, but fun, and made all the more so by the entertaining footnotes. Yes, Rankin with footnotes. And entertaining, because they’re frequently wrong.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The footnotes are usually explanations of cultural references (this Who<\/i> song, that Rolling Stones<\/i> number). However, when the translator isn’t sure what the reference is to, sometimes he just pulls something out of his arse. For example:<\/p>\r\n