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Castafiore Emerald: Did the jewel get taken to Japan?

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tintiNZ
Member
#11 · Posted: 2 Jul 2021 22:02
jock123:
Just to take a moment to give credit where it's due, while Hergé no doubt had a joke here, this Spoonerism is undoubtedly the work of Michael Turner.

Exactly Simon. Apologies to Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and the late Michael Turner.
mct16
Member
#12 · Posted: 2 Jul 2021 23:51
Balthazar
Balthazar:
I actually just typed "nous martons" into Google translate and it told me that meant "we hammer" in French.

I did make a general search for "nous martons" and only found misspellings on social media or poor OCRing on Google Books.

"nous martons" would be a conjugation for the verb "marter" which does not exist. I'm afraid that Google Translate was just making a wild guess. To be precise, a mild goose :)

In this case, it strikes me that Turner did a bit better than Hergé.
Balthazar
Moderator
#13 · Posted: 3 Jul 2021 00:22
mct16:
"nous martons" would be a conjugation for the verb "marter" which does not exist. I'm afraid that Google Translate was just making a wild guess.

Ah, thank you for the correction, and apologies for letting my unwise trust in Google Translate lead me to post that incorrect info!

(By the way, from a more reliable-looking site, it seems that the correct present tense first-person plural conjugation of marteler would be nous martelons - though feel free to correct me if that's also wrong! Not that this is now relevant to Hergé's text, of course - which it seems included a nonsense word after all - but just in the interests of learning some correct French out of my stumbling online research attempts!)
mct16
Member
#14 · Posted: 3 Jul 2021 21:20
An actual tool called a hammer is "marteau" in French. Google Translate may have thought that "martons" was a misspelling.

The term "marteler" ("to hammer") is actually new to me. I didn't know that there was a verb meaning to use a hammer.

Your earn something new every way... I mean, you yearn something slew every play...
jock123
Moderator
#15 · Posted: 4 Jul 2021 13:27
tintiNZ:
Exactly Simon. Apologies to Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and the late Michael Turner.

I'm sure that they would be happy to know that you hold their translation so highly that it appeared to be genuine Hergé... ;-)
mct16:
I cannot figure out the second bit.

I'm not sure that that type of error in speech has to make sense, so there may be nothing to actually figure out...
Spoonerisms are often nonsensical, as they seem to result from the brain trying to process parts of the words simultaneously, rather than sequentially, and vocalising them in the wrong order; while this can lead to accidental meaning (so "lighting a fire" becomes "fighting a liar"), it's not always going to be the case (so someone getting their "words muddled" may say they are getting their "muds wurdled" - funny, but nonsense).
Interestingly, the Reverend William Spooner, who seems to have been badly afflicted in this department, and after whom the phenomenon is now named, had the middle name Archibald...
mct16:
The real question of course is if the Thom(p)sons actually managed to even leave Marlinspike with the emerald

Hah! Good point!
Yes, we may actually be overlooking the biggest issue...! ;-)

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