Sunday

Atelier Ciseaux




Atelier Ciseaux is an independent record label based in France and Canada,  that releases wonderful music on vinyl (mostly). I have occasionally helped here and there to translate a few things for them because they are my friends and i like what they do.

 

Pamela Des Barres


Let's Spend the Night Together (French title : In Bed with...) written by Pamela Des Barres. 

Here's a summary (via amazon.com)

A groupie is to a rock band as Mary Magdalene was to Jesus, asserts L.A. rock author Des Barres (I'm with the Band) in this eager, self-congratulatory attempt to rehabilitate the term groupie through two dozen fun and well-documented examples of rock muses since the 1960s. Des Barres steers her interviewees to underscore their important role in making their rock star boyfriends look good and play well, such as Tura Satana, given the dubious title Miss Japan Beautiful, who met awkward young Elvis Presley on the burlesque circuit in the mid-'50s and taught him his shimmying moves. 

Des Barres recalls her groupie rivals back in the day, including Patti D'Arbanville, Bebe Buell, Lori Lightning and Catherine James. Cynthia Plaster Caster, the Rodin of Rock, shares her descriptions of her plaster replicas of rock stars' penises (including that of Jimmy Hendrix), while Dee Dee Keel spills tales of her oral exploits for British rockers with deplorable bathing habits, and male groupie Pleather relays Courtney Love's shaky self-esteem. In the end, it's all about the music, or as Pleasant Gehman sums it up blithely in this breathlessly gossipy scrapbook: Being a groupie is like worshipping at the church of rock and roll—and you are the high priestess. 

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The French version I translated was published by a French publishing house called Scali, which went bankrupt a few months after the book was published. So the book is almost impossible to find now in French (you can try second-hand bookstores and online sites perhaps). The English version is still available though.

Revue Collection


I was asked to translate a couple of interviews. The second issue of Collection will be out soon !


Une revue autour du dessin contemporain
A magazine about contemporary drawing

Collection est une revue qui présente le dessin sous de multiples formes, de l’art contemporain au graphisme en passant par la bande-dessinée, à travers le dialogue avec des artistes. Composée de dessinateurs, l’équipe de Collection ne propose ni un point de vue journalistique ni un point de vue critique, mais souhaite, sans aucune barrière de genres, défendre le dessin en laissant la parole à ceux qui en sont les acteurs.
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Collection is a magazine that presents drawing in many forms, from contemporary art to graphic novels to graphic design. All artists themselves, the Collection team proposes neither a journalistic viewpoint nor a critic’s vision, but instead aspires to defend drawing, with no barriers between genres, by letting the actors themselves speak.

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Au sommaire / summary

Mathias Schweizer, Ludovic Boulard Le Fur, Christian Aubrun, Stéphane Prigent, Petra Mrzyk et Jean-François Moriceau, Fanny Michaëlis, Charles Burns, Corentin Grossmann, Pimp My Life, Gerard Herman, Ricardo Lanzarini, Ruppert & Mulot…
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bilingue / bilingual : French / English
164 p. couleur / full color
16,5 x 23 cm,
18 €
Éditions En Marge



White Bicyles (éditions Allia)

White Bicycles, Making Music in the Sixties by Joe Boyd.
“This is the best book about music I’ve read in years, and a gripping piece of social history.”—Brian Eno

I had the opportunity to translate this book into French for the publishing house Allia.  It was really an honour to translate such a wonderful book about music in the sixties, dealing with Nick Drake (one of my favourite artists), Dylan, and so many others !


Summary found on Amazon.com

When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the 1960s, a kid from Boston called Joe Boyd was his tour manager; when Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar; when the summer of love got going, Joe Boyd was running UFO, the coolest club in London; when a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer; when a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd. 

More than any previous sixties music autobiography, Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. As well as the sixties heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Fairport Convention. 

Record and film producer Joe Boyd was born in Boston in 1942 and graduated from Harvard in 1964. He went on to produce Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., and many others. He produced the documentary Jimi Hendrix and the film Scandal. In 1980 he started Hannibal Records and ran it for twenty years. He lives in London.

Mes chaussettes porte-bonheur


I translated this book entitled Lucky Socks and written by Carrie Weston into French. A nice litlle story for kids who always tend to lose their stuff. Does it ring a bell ?

Les courses avec Papa



The second book I translated for Le Ballon. Shopping with Dad is the story of a young girl who goes shopping with her Dad, and things don't really go as planned.  
Written by Matt Harvey and illustrated by Myriam Latimer.

Circulation(s)



I was asked to translate from French to English the catalogue of the first edition of the festival Circulation(s), dedicated to young European photography, taking place in February-March 2011 in Paris.


Circulation(s), a European festival dedicated to young photography.
The festival Circulation (s) wishes to provide a fresh perspective on european society through photography and to bring out the talents of young european photography.
Without limitating itself to a theme or a particular area, the event will receive works that belong to plastician photography, judged on their originality, their artistic quality and their point of view on European identity.

The festival also aims to integrate and highlight initiatives taken by photography schools, art dealers, curators or publishers from Europe.
Indeed Circulation(s) differs itself from existing festivals of photography through its pan-European positioning and its open-mindedness to diverse inputs and currents.