Lost in French

Entrusting oneself to a translator, or to a translation, is an act of faith. A person who knows two languages can make fast fool out of those with only half his repertoire. In the mid-1990s Denis Duboule, a postdoctoral student in genetics in Strasbourg, France, came up with a new technique to produce duplication in the chromosomes of mice. Like 98 percent of scientists, he was to publish his findings in English. One Friday afternoon, he and some colleagues got together to decide what to call their discovery. Over beers, they hit upon TAMERE – « targeted meiotic recombination ». In later papers, francophone researchers detailed their advances in sequential targeted recombination induced genomic approach (STRING) and pangenomic translocation for heterologous enhancer reshuffling (PANTHERE). It wasn’t until 2014 that English speaking geneticists learned that their French speaking peers, for the better part of two decades, have been having a laugh at their expense. Ta mère (« your mom ») is shortland for niquer ta mère (« fuck your mother »). The apotheosis of mère-slagging is Ta mère en string panthère – « Your mom in a leopard G-string ».

Mon amour, he’d say, pass me the salt.