Last month I ran a little contest to help get some suggestions about what to call my book in Spanish, and I got a lot of suggestions. In fact, the one from Diego Rodriguez and his uncle Valentin was so detailed and fascinating that I turned it into another post. I haven’t heard back from my Spanish publisher on what they ultimately decided to pick, but I did hear from Geoff Staines and Marie-Pierre Vaslet at my French publisher, Vuibert, which will be publishing the book in April.
They decided to call it "Objectif Zéro-Sale-Con." I love the clean cover and think they did a great job with the button. And just as with the Spanish edition, the conversation about how the title evolved was fascinating and funny. Geoff Staines explains:
of endearment generously employed throughout the French-speaking world, but
during an impromptu Vuibert seminar on the subject its meaning was felt to be
halfway between sneak and jerk, besides which it is not used in relation to
women. The very commonly used "con", in many ways the natural choice, usually
means plain stupid and lacks the disruptive/destructive/mean-minded nuance. The
more selective expression "sale con", however, does it all because the qualifier
"sale" (dirty) emphasises the intentional nature of the con-ness. And as for
"zéro" instead of "règle" (rule) or "facteur" (which means factor but also
postman), we went for it because it harks back, amongst other things, to "zéro
défaut" (from the quality circles’ elimination of faults).
And Marie-Pierre Vaslet echoed a similar argument, and added some interesting tidbits:
I was very interested by what you say in your blog about the Spanish
translation. We had the same problem but I hope we found a solution. In French,
the exact word for "asshole" is "trou du cul," but it is rather less usual
than in English, and quite rare to say about a woman. So we choose "sale con,"
which is very very usual, and we think it has quite the same meaning as "asshole" in English……
To translate the other part of
the title (the no…rule), we choose "Objectif zéro-sale-con." The expression "objectif zéro…" (defet, stock, etc.) was employed in French business books
titles a few years ago (and even now) and we found amusing to make this
reference when talking about "sales cons."
Unlike the Spanish version, the title is set, but I still am most interested to hear from people who speak French, especially anyone in France, about their reactions to the title. I don’t necessarily expect agreement and approval, and I always love the arguments about what to call the book.
P.S. These arguments aren’t just about the translation from English to other languages, it seems that there are also arguments about the right translation from American to English. See this posting by Richard Donkin on Let Call the Whole Thing Orf.
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