Need Help From A French Speaker

[Warspock]

I like to rename my artifacts based on my Dynasty culture's language, so I need some help with the correct French grammar/spelling on a few book artifacts. This is what I have so far doing my own amateur translating:

1. Military Strategy, According to Saint-Jaufré = Stratégie Militaire, Selon Saint-Jaufré

2. The Feudal Court, by Louis I = La Cour Féodale, par Louis I

3. On Aquitanian Architecture = Sur L'Architecture Aquitanienne

4. A Bourbonnais Tale, or "Louis and Lucia" = Un Conte Bourbonnais, ou " Louis et Lucia"

Are these correct? Should certain words not be capitalized, like selon, conte, cour, etc? Thanks.

 

[LeChacalPuant]

Hello
I'm a native french speaker, and if I had to translate those artifacts by myselft I would rename them like that :
1. La Stratégie Militaire selon Saint-Jaufré
2 is good imo
3. Sur l'Architecture Aquitaine
4. Une Histoire Bourbonne, ou "Louis et Lucia"

Your translation is good and would make sense for book titles, I just feel mine is smoothier. Anyway another native could give you another translation or tell you to go with yours
I capitalized based on the original name, so in english. I don't think there's a rule in french saying you must capitalize names in titles, but you can if you want I guess.

 

[Warspock]

Thanks for the reply, if I have anymore, I'll ask in here. Most of the artifacts were easy to translate, like the Crown of thorns, Scepters, etc. But the long titles and grammar needed with books was harder to know if I got them right.

 

[Metanetwork]

French does have a set of rules for capitalizing words in titles.

• The first word in the title is always capitalized. Proper names are also capitalized.
• The most important noun is capitalized. It's usually the first noun in the tile. A title derived from another title can have multiple capitalized nouns.
• If a capitalized noun is modified by adjectives, these adjectives must be capitalized if they precede their noun, and can facultatively be capitalized if they are placed after their noun but are at least as important than the noun itself (demonymic adjectives are usually not capitalized).
• Other words are usually not capitalized.

French also has a rule for properly using quotation marks. The first layer of quotation is « », the second layer is " ", the third layer is ' ', etc.

Your books could look something like this:

1. La Stratégie Militaire selon Saint-Jaufré
2. La Cour Féodale, par Louis I
3. Sur l'Architecture aquitaine
4. Une Histoire bourbonnaise, ou « Louis et Lucia »

I determined that "Militaire" was as important as "Stratégie"; and "Féodale" was as important as « Cour », so both "Militaire" and "Féodale" were capitalized. I determined that "aquitaine" and "bourbonnaise" were demonymic and were not worth capitalizing.

"Bourbonnaise" is because I assumed that the book refers to the duchy of Bourbonnais. If the book's title refers to the Bourbon dynasty, replace this adjective with "bourbonienne".

 

[Warspock]

Very Cool. I do have a question for you Frenchmen and the Francophile. Histoire and Conte. What is the French difference? The word Histoire, I take as the English history and as a non-fictional narrative. What is Conte exactly in French? Is it more modern, or does it mean something else than a fictional tale/story? Etymologically it's Latin, like most French, but did the word pop up and have a more nuanced meaning at some point? I'm asking because my lothario great-nephew wrote it and he's no Herodotus. It's a very long poem at best, I'm assuming.

Thanks again!

 

[Metanetwork]

The word Histoire has multiple definitions. In summary, it can mean a real or fictional story (une histoire) or History (l'Histoire). The word Conte is strictly a fictional story, can be oral or written, and is meant to entertain. For instance, fairy tale = conte de fées.

Both the words Histoire and Conte are acceptable but their meaning is different. If the author was writing down an oral story or penning in the style of oral stories, the book would be "Un Conte bourbonnais". If the book is narratively presented as a real account of events, the book would be "Une Histoire bourbonnaise".