In the nineties, French photographer Janol Apin went underground and shot a funny series of “translated” metro station names. Here are a few:
For non-french speakers (some of them are self-explanatory but still)
Monceau: sounds like “my bucket” – ‘Mon seau’
Gare du nord: North Station
Champ de mars: Field of Mars
Ecole militaire: Military school
Portes de Vincennes: Vincennes is a famous horse racing track
Quatre Septembre: September 4th (back to school)
Richard Lenoir: Sounds like “Richard the black” – ‘Richard le noir’
Rue des boulets: Boulet is french for cannonball (or ball and chain)
Maison Blanche: White House
Rue de la pompe: Push-up Street (pompe meaning pump)
Invalides: Invalid
Liberté: Liberty
Rome: Roma
Duroc: Sounds like “Some Rock” – ‘Du rock’
Alesia: Place of a famous Gaul battle
Alexandre Dumas: Writer of ‘the 3 musketeers’
Dupleix: Duplex
It’s a bit.. adolescent. If I may say so.
Maybe Janol Apin was 16 when he took those pics?
Sorry but Quatre-Septembre (4th of september) doesn’t refer to Back to school but to Sept 4th, 1870 when Third Republic was proclaimed (fall of the Second Empire after French troops were defeated by Prussians and we lost Alsace and Lorraine…)
absolutely correct Zoë… but that would make for a clearly more complicated photo-op!
;-)