Bonjour! Today is French Language Day and we’re taking a moment to think about what French pastries can teach us about the importance of regional localisation in translation.
Do you have your ham and cheese in a bap, roll, bun or cob? It’s well known that English bread products show a lot of regional lexical variation and the word that you use can say a lot about your background and identity.
There are similar bready dialectal differences in France. Let’s take that delicious excuse to eat chocolate for breakfast - the pain au chocolat. While this term is used widely throughout much of France, the pastry is also known as a petit pain au chocolat in the North and a chocolatine in much of the South. In the East, you might enjoy a croissant au chocolat with your morning café au lait and in parts of francophone Belgium, you could even be served a couque au chocolat!
Although this is just a bit of fun, it does demonstrate that regional localisation can be more complex than it first appears.
(And if you love France, language variety and maps then do check out the work of French linguist Mathieu Avanzi.)
