French name?

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Anne Fisher wrote:

> Hello folks,
>
> I'm translating Platonov's "Anti-Sexus" and am wondering how best to
> transliterate the second name in the company name Беркман, Шотлуа и Сн.
> (Berkman, Shotlua i Sn).
>
> My one distant semester of college French, which I'm assuming is the
> language of origin of the name "Shotlua," doesn't make me feel confident
> about my transliteration - would the best transliteration be "Chatlois?"
> I googled that and didn't find any person with a similar name to whom
> Platonov may have been referring... so any leads on possible referents
> would also be gladly received.

The vast majority of hits on the web are for "Antisexus" without the 
hyphen (following American spelling rules), so you might have better 
luck searching that way.

There does seem to be one translation into Dutch as "De antisexus," 
wherein the name is spelled "Shotlew," but that doesn't sound much like 
the Russian.

I concur that the Russian "о" in the first syllable is unlikely to 
represent American English "short o" = /a/, but it could well represent 
French /o/.

French spelling is tricky because of all the silent consonants and 
multiple options for the same sounds. The second syllable, for example, 
might be "loi" or "lois" or "loit" because either "s" or "t" would be 
silent. And of course /o/ can be spelled "au," "eau," "aux," "eaux," 
"haut," etc. etc. It's how they keep the farners out. ;-)

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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