Talk:Souvenir d'un lieu cher

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Classical music

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Thank you[edit]

Thank you JackofOz! Mariah-Yulia (talk) 03:28, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Translation is wrong[edit]

Souvenir d'un lieu cher does not mean, Memory of a dear place in the sense of the place being remembered fondly - it means the place was expensive. In French, cher before the noun means dear but after the noun it means expensive. So le cher ami - the dear friend; le cadeau cher - the expensive gift. This was most likely an error in translation on the part of whomever helped Tchaikovsky name the piece or, less likely, a funny pun. I'm not too sure whether to leave the text as it is: unedited with this funny translation or; to fix it. So, to make a middle ground I'll add some notes explaining the above. --EcheveriaJ (talk) 21:58, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a reliable source for this? Sounds like WP:OR to me. I've looked up some secondary sources, and all of them give the translation "Memory of a dear place". Tchaikovsky did speak French fluently. I'll be adding some relevant sources to the article. intforce (talk) 14:02, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Intforce: thanks for your reply. This isn't original research per se, I'm just applying my understanding of French grammar to point out what seems (to me) to be an error. I think it's either a mistake on Tchaikovsky's part, and everyone who has translated is glossing over such, or it's a clever pun - though putting that in the article would indeed be WP:OR. If the article discussed the translation as a note or some such, I don't think that's WP:OR as I think it lies within WP:TRANSCRIPTION. If you'd like to read on the grammar point, then here are 2 brief posts: a Lawless French article and here is a kwiziq post. Hope that helps, and sorry for taking a while to reply - I didn't have this page on my watchlist - EcheveriaJ (talk) 15:59, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not an expert on 19th century French grammar. I don't think WP:TRANSCRIPTION applies when there is debate if a certain translation is correct, especially if it is universally used in all available sources. Perhaps another expert in French can give their opinion. intforce (talk) 19:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth: The place was not expensive to Tchaikovsky. Its use was a free gift. Zaslav (talk) 00:56, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Name in English[edit]

In years of hearing and reading about this piece I have rarely noticed it called "Memory of a Dear Place". The usual names in English are "Memory of a Beloved Place" and even more commonly "Souvenir of a Beloved Place". Since most of this was on the radio it is hard to provide documentation. I wish to point out that "dear place", which is a literal translation of French, is more of an 18th-19th century phrase for English and nowadays seems a bit weird compared to "beloved". Editor User:Intforce took out "Beloved Place" and changed titles to lower case, both contrary to common English usage. I restored the alternate English names with a citation to a radio program listing (with titles capitalized). Zaslav (talk) 00:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]