Need a bit of help for French language

[Tomh1966]

What would be "Happy Frog" in French? There is a restaurant in my upcoming story run by a self-deprecating Frenchman who thought it would be funny.

google says Grenouille Heureuse, but I am not sure if that is correct.

 

[onehitwanda]

Judging by my last trip to Paris, it would be "Le Happy Frog."

 

[Bamagan]

Those are indeed the words. Grenouille is a feminine noun, but if the man is making a joke he might say Grenouille Heureux to imply it's referring to himself specifically. Kind of like a pun in that it's not strictly speaking grammatically correct but francophones might understand as a joke. You could also add 'cet' to the beginning, which means 'this,' and would be 'cette' for a feminine noun, which could reinforce the joke possibly.
But I don't know if French speakers actually make or appreciate word-play jokes like that. The Académie Française may not allow them to laugh at such things.

 

[SyleusSnow]

Cette grenouille contente sort of works too, though I can't imagine anyone from France ever referring to themselves as a frog, even as a joke.

And despite the efforts of L'Académie française and regional language police like Office québécois de la langue française, French around the world varies. Parisian French is different from Swiss, which is different from Québécois and so on. Getting French speakers from different parts of the world together in a room to translate a document can be a real hoot.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Where is the restaurant? I can't imagine it working as a name in France, but froggy names would work in the UK. Mr Happy Frog sounds like a cheap cafe, Monsieur Grenouille might be more upmarket (appealing to people who can remember from school or will look up what Grenouille means).

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Cette grenouille contente sort of works too, though I can't imagine anyone from France ever referring to themselves as a frog, even as a joke.

And despite the efforts of L'Académie française and regional language police like Office québécois de la langue française, French around the world varies. Parisian French is different from Swiss, which is different from Québécois and so on. Getting French speakers from different parts of the world together in a room to translate a document can be a real hoot.

And the French lawyers dominate the EU. So reading EU legislation in English is not English as we know it. Often to figure out wtf it means, you need to go to the original French version and read that instead. And then let the two sets of lawyers argue it out. Rarely you get a directive where the original language is German, which tends to make more sense.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I put a few snippets of French in my latest story. I think I got half of them wrong on checking .

Em

 

[MrPixel]

I named a bistro 'Ma Maison de la Baise' in a story a while back, based on a Google Translate. For you francophones, was that correct? Nobody said anything about it in comments, as I'm sure somebody would want to remind me of the error of my ways.

 

[ronde]

Write the Google translation and then explain it. Those who speak French will probably have some other translation in mind no matter what you write. Explaining that it means "Happy Frog" will keep those us who don't speak French from stopping our read and clicking on Google to find out.

I often put parts of dialogue in a language other than English, and then have the character do the translation so the reader doesn't have to.

 

[SyleusSnow]

I put a few snippets of French in my latest story. I think I got half of them wrong on checking .

Em

Guaranteed some native French-speaker will say they are all wrong

I have one story with lotsa French (Proper Charlotte)... with every word vetted by my personal in-house French-talking person and other sources.

Some readers praised both the French and the mistakes the French-speaking character makes in English (eg. "broom the floor"). Then others accused me of just running everything through Google Translate... apparently because the French was not their particular regional vernacular.

Admittedly, the dialect was not the Swiss French of the character, but come on (besides, everyone knows DeepL is superior to Google Translate).

English-speakers might quibble about wording and even throw Strunk & White at you, but then will generally shrug and move on. French speakers, meanwhile, seem to get into protracted fistfights over what is The One True Wording

We should all just learn Esperanto.

 

[Altissimus]

ChatGPT is quite good for this.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

La Grenouille Joyeuse would be correct. But if that does not make you happy, may I offer you 'La Grenouille Magique'
Or 'Le Joyeux Ribbit'

 

[Altissimus]

Or 'Le Joyeux Ribbit'

I might just write a story off this prompt.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Where is the restaurant? The name might go over well in England, but not in France (btw, isn't "self-deprecating Frenchman" an oxymoron?), and many in England would get the joke without need of translation (Google or otherwise). In the States, I expect it would be meaningless as a self-deprecating joke, and more likely taken as some referent to serving frogs' legs. Changing the gender might be seen as a play on words in French, but the initial reaction would be to take it as poor grammar (a male frog still retains the feminine gender for the 'frog' part: <<la grenouille mâle>>). And in my part of Canada, one would be totalement fou to name a restaurant that.

Bonne chance, mon ami!

 

[Tio_Narratore]

La Grenouille Joyeuse would be correct. But if that does not make you happy, may I offer you 'La Grenouille Magique'
Or 'Le Joyeux Ribbit'

And when I was a very young lad in the States, Andy Devine had a Saturday morning TV show entitled "Andy's Gang." It featured "Froggie," whom Andy would urge "pluck your magic twanger, Froggie," and the frog would appear, primarily to screw up the "Professor's" lecture.
As to your other suggestion, a frozen food company here used to have chopped pork formed in rib shapes for barbecueing; they were named "Ribbits." They've since changed the name.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Where is the restaurant? The name might go over well in England, but not in France (btw, isn't "self-deprecating Frenchman" an oxymoron?), and many in England would get the joke without need of translation (Google or otherwise). In the States, I expect it would be meaningless as a self-deprecating joke, and more likely taken as some referent to serving frogs' legs. Changing the gender might be seen as a play on words in French, but the initial reaction would be to take it as poor grammar (a male frog still retains the feminine gender for the 'frog' part: <<la grenouille mâle>>). And in my part of Canada, one would be totalement fou to name a restaurant that.

Bonne chance, mon ami!

Pardonnez-moi if I'm completely off base here, but I suspect that a frog-named restaurant would be perfectly acceptable in France provided cuisses de grenouille is on the menu, but most definitely would not fly if it is only a reference to the owner's national identity.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Pardonnez-moi if I'm completely off base here, but I suspect that a frog-named restaurant would be perfectly acceptable in France provided cuisses de grenouille is on the menu, but most definitely would not fly if it is only a reference to the owner's national identity.

And that was exactly what the OP intended, Madame; hence my comment. He intended it to be a self-deprecating ethnic slur as a joke. Not exactly French humour.

 

[XerXesXu]

'Le Français heureux', would be the translation from British English.