Apprendre le français XXIII: Appât Page 26

PAGE 26 (Four panels)

Panel 1: Professor Turpentine, sitting in a cramped academic office. Behind him are shelves stacked with books and papers. He’s wearing a rumpled tweed jacket and being interviewed behind his desk.

Turpentine (1): This creature, whatever it is, is highly intelligent. It can evade ordinary capture methods with ease. It also generates electromagnetic and subsonic fields that interfere with underwater communications. And it even cuts control cables.

Translation (1): Cette créature, quelle qu’elle soit, était très intelligente. Elle peut échapper facilement aux méthodes de capture classiques. Elle génère également des champs électromagnétiques et subsoniques qui interfèrent avec les communications sous-marines. Et elle parvient même à couper des câbles de commande.

SUBTITLE (2): Professor Eustace Turpentine, Innsmouth Institute for Marine Research.

Translation (2): Professeur Eustace Turpentine, Institut de recherche en vie marine d’Innsmouth.

Panel 2: CLAUDIA HONEYWOOD (“Claudia”) holds in her hands a submersible drone – and underwater swimming robot about the size of a toaster, in her hands, holding it forth for the camera to take a picture of. Claudia is a very attractive woman, but she downplays her attractiveness, being here in a set of coveralls, her long brown hear drawn back in a bun, and here wearing heavy safety glasses. (When Claudia is not wearing these glasses she wears other glasses that make her look a bit dorky, or at least as dorky as a beautiful person can be.)

CAPTION – TURPENTINE NARRATING (3): But recently, artificial intelligence has advanced to the point where we can make effective autonomous underwater drones.

Translation (3): Mais récemment, l’intelligence artificielle a progressé au point où nous pouvons concevoir des drones sous-marins autonomes.

Panel 3: Claudia on board ship in another cramped control room, this time also looking at a monitor. Claudia is now dressed in a white coat and is wearing glasses with heavy dark frames.

CAPTION – TURPENTINE NARRATING (4): The creature leaves the drones alone for some reason. These drones can also penetrate the deep trenches where the creature likes to lurk.

Translation (4): La créature laisse les drones tranquilles pour une raison quelconque. Ces drones peuvent également pénétrer dans les tranchées profondes où la créature aime se dissimuler.

Panel 4: A murky image of the creature, a sort of giant squidlike thing with one large siphon (big enough for someone to fit down) and a large number of tentacles of all sorts and shapes.

CAPTION – TURPENTINE NARRATING (5): Thanks to these clever little machines, we now have a good sense of the gross morphology of the creature.

Translation (5): Grâce à ces petites machines sophistiquées, nous connaissons désormais la morphologie générale de la créature.

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Apprendre le français XXII: Appât Page 25

PAGE 25 (Four panels)

Panel 1: A U.S. Navy corvette cruising by Motofupo.

CAPTION – PSEUDO-NARRATION (1): The Navy searched the waters around the spot of Phoebe Petrobux’s disappearance but could find nothing.

Translation (1): La Marine fouilla les fonds marins là où Phoebe Petrobux avait disparu, mais ne trouva rien.

Panel 2: Barron Sr., looking profoundly aged, is sitting at his ornate desk in his office. He is holding a pen and looking down at a document in the middle of his desk, holding a pen in one hand and about to sign. Over one shoulder a HIGH-PRICED LAWYER is pointing to where on the document he should sign. Barron Jr., now about fourteen years-old, looks on over his father’s other shoulder. We should be able to see Barron Jr.’s Distinguishing Feature.

CAPTION – PSEUDO-NARRATION (2): A bereaved Barron Petrobux set aside a large part of his wealth to create a foundation to study and attempt to capture whatever creature had taken away his daughter.

Translation (2): Endeuillé, Petrobux Barron mit de côté une grande partie de sa fortune pour créer une fondation afin d’étudier et de tenter de capturer la créature qui lui avait enlevé sa fille.

Panel 3: A group of scientists pushing a large unmanned submersible off the back of a small research ship in the waters around Motofupo.

CAPTION – PSEUDO-NARRATION (3): At the next nineteen year-interval, in 2000, a team of scientists attempted to find the creature when it was expected to rise again.

Translation (3): Dix-neuf ans après, en 2000, une équipe de scientifiques tenta de trouver la créature qui était censée apparaitre à nouveau.

Panel 4: Two scientists in white coats staring at a screen in a control panel, inside a cramped research vessel cabin. One is seated, the other looking over the should of the other, taking notes. The seated one is throwing up his hands in frustration.

CAPTION – PSEUDO-NARRATION (4): The results of the scientists’ research were inconclusive and frustrating.

Translation (4): Les résultats de cette recherche ne furent pas concluants.

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Bubbles animation!


Creative Commons License
Bubbling Away is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

We’ve been making art and comics here at Erotic Mad Science for almost nine years now, and while this ins’t quite the first actual animation (Erosarts did some animated .gifs early on, including this girlscanner animation, but this is the first one that resembles an actual movie clip with sound and everything. It’s the work of artist HayleyPetHarley, for whom you can find a site at Newgrounds and follow on Twitter. You can also do as I do and support the artist on Patreon. C’mon, people, where do you think art comes from?

The art is an imagined version of the “Bubbles experiment,” which is the subject of my most ambitious comics translation experiment and versions of which you have been seeing here at Erotic Mad Science.

You can download the original MP4 of the animation here.

I had a great deal of fun working with the artist on this particular project, and hope you like it as well. If you do, feel free to sound off in the comments. Animation isn’t cheap, but maybe could be persuaded to do more…

Apprendre le français XXI: Appât Page 24

PAGE 24 (Four panels)

Panel 1: CARSON MACMURDIE (“MacMurdie”) an elderly but dignified-looking man (a retired U.S. Navy officer) in an interview pose.

MacMurdie (1): Well, it was a fuckup, that’s what it was.

Comment (1): A “fuckup” is a coarse and colloquial way of adescribing “a big, consequential mistake.”

Translation (1): Ah ben, pour une erreur, c’était une erreur.

SUBTITLE – IDENTIFIER (2): Capt. Carson MacMurdie, USN, Ret.

Comment (2): “Capt.” is an abbreviation for “Captain,” in this case a relatively senior rank in the United States Navy, often a commander of a large vessel. “USN” is an abbreviation for “United States Navy” and “Ret.” indicates that he is retired.

Translation (2): Capitaine Carson MacMurdie, ancien de l’US Navy

Panel 2: A photograph of two U.S. Navy officers in Second World War-era uniforms surveying a table of maps, documents, photographs.

CAPTION – MACMURDIE NARRATING (3): There was an investigation into the disappearance of those nurses in 1943, but its conclusion was too weird and disturbing to be circulated. So the report was classified top secret and the area simply closed off.

Translation (3): Il y eut une enquête sur la disparition de ces infirmières en 1943, mais sa conclusion était trop étrange et troublante pour qu’elle soit diffusée. Le rapport fut classé top secret et la zone fut tout simplement fermée.

Panel 3: External view of a large warehouse.

CAPTION – MACMURDIE NARRATING (4): By thirty-eight years later, everyone had forgotten why the area was closed, and the report was buried deep in some Navy archive. Anyone connected with the investigation had died or moved on. Nobody bothered to go back to the records and check.

Translation (4): Trente-huit ans plus tard, tout le monde avait oublié la raison pour laquelle la zone avait été fermée, et le rapport s’est perdu dans les archives de la Marine. Les personnes ayant participé à l’enquête étaient mortes ou étaient passées à autre chose. Personne ne prit la peine de rouvrir le dossier.

Panel 4: MacMurdie in interview pose again.

MacMurdie (5): So when Mr. Rich and Powerful showed up and said he wanted to yacht in those waters, the Navy just replied “Yes, sir” and gave him a permit.

Translation (5): Ainsi, lorsque monsieur Riche et puissant s’est présenté et a demandé à séjourner dans cette zone à bord de son yacht, la Marine lui répondit simplement « Oui monsieur » et lui octroya un permis.

MacMurdie (6): Too bad about the poor girl…

Translation (6): C’est bien triste ce qui est arrivé à cette pauvre fille…

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