>maman died today woah....how kafkaesque

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Camus

You can roughly date when people read The Stranger based on which translation is most common. Currently it's "Maman died today," which seems to make the most sense. It flows pretty well in English, and directly translating, "Aujord'hui, maman est morte" would be, 'today, mother has died,' which seems awkward and doesn't flow extremely well.

But awkward is a good descriptor of Meursault's personality. He doesn't think about the past, or think ahead to the future. He is a dispassionate, passive observer. His mother didn't die today, today was occurring and then his mother died.

All of which is to say that anyone reading The Stranger is an utter pleb and should have waited until the day when a half-decent translation is available.

>>8406525
Keeping the Maman in French makes no sense, it should be 'Mother died today'.

>>8406525
objectively the best translation would be "Mama is dead today."

>>8406535
>is dead

What? It's "died."

>>8406548
"is dead" is better than "died"

>>8406525
>>8406531
>>8406535

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be

>>8406555
already read that and it's still wrong. "Mama is dead today." is the perfect translation that has yet to be

>>8406552
I'll admit I haven't been studying French for long, but I feel like because "est morte" is passé composé, the "est" shouldn't be translated as "is."

>>8406558
Mama sounds a bit dialectical to me. Also, the 'is dead' reading isn't bad on its own, but the next part: "Ou peut-etre hier" (Or maybe yesterday) seems to suggest that the correct rendering is 'died.'

So I would actually just say "Mom died today."

>>8406580
*regional, not dialectical, that was a linguistic misstep.

>>8406535
>>8406558
Of course not. The equivalent is "Mom".

>>8406525
"Aujourd'hui" comes first in French the same way "today" comes last in English. Your interpretation tries to add something that simply isn't there.