Translating the printemps érable

Translating the printemps érable is a volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media's extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media that has been published in French into English. These are amateur translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be desired. If you find any important errors in any of these texts, we would be very grateful if you would share them with us at translatingtheprintempsderable@gmail.com. Please read and distribute these texts in the spirit in which they were intended; that of solidarity and the sharing of information.

 

If you would like to volunteer and join the effort, please contact us at the above email before embarking on any translation work, in order to avoid any redundancies. We cannot accept translations that have not been cleared with us first.

 

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For more useful English-language sources on the conflict, see:

CUTV - broadcasting live from the protests nightly

OpenFile Montreal

Rouge Squad - Tactical Translation Team

Montreal Media Coop

Resources on the Conflict

Rabble.ca's Maple Spring Coverage

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By Rima Elkouri, published in La Presse, May 30, 2012

Original French Text Here: http://www.lapresse.ca/debats/chroniques/rima-elkouri/201205/30/01-4529910-le-prof-de-philo-et-ses-lunettes-de-ski.php

“It’s really the nightstick blow that started it all.”

The man who is talking to me in a hoarse voice is named Olivier Roy. He’s 31. Ski goggles are sitting on his table. He’s visibly exhausted. Visibly indignant.

By day, Olivier Roy is a philosophy teacher at CÉGEP de Terrebonne. By night, for more than a month, he has demonstrated against police brutality. He has participated in some thirty marches. He was still out there Tuesday night.

Olivier tells me, almost shyly, that he recently had to buy these ski goggles. Not for skiing, you understand. Neither for confronting the police—that’s not at all his style. But just to be able to demonstrate peacefully without worrying about his eyes. For more than a month, he’s felt too much pepper. He’s seen too many plastic bullets fired, too many concussion grenades that can blind a person. After his marathon of demonstrations, he has arrived at the sad conclusion that a citizen who wishes to protest needs two things; ski goggles and a camera.

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