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French to English English (monolingual) French (monolingual) English to French
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French to English: Rooms in the pre-17th century home General field: Social Sciences Detailed field: Architecture
Source text - French Jusqu’au XVIIe siècle, les pièces d’habitation sont, et ce dans toutes les couches sociales, des « espaces polyvalents », où seul le mobilier détermine l’usage. Ainsi, en fonction de la saison ou du nombre de convives, les lieux où se tiennent les repas sont très divers : dans l’architecture des élites, la chambre, la salle ou l’antichambre peuvent très bien tenir ce rôle, avant que s’impose la salle à manger. S’ensuit alors un processus d’adoption de la pièce assez lent qui ne se généralisera à toutes les couches de la société qu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Le développement de cette pièce s’est nourri d’un terreau d’évolutions architecturales et sociales très riche.
L’enjeu de cet article est de revenir sur les lieux qui ont servi de pièces du repas jusqu’à la fin de l’Ancien Régime, avant de comprendre les raisons qui ont présidé à l’adoption de la salle à manger dans les demeures françaises. Inédites, les réflexions proposées sont largement issues du travail de doctorat que j’ai soutenu en décembre 2017.
Jusqu’au début du XIXe siècle, la plupart des Français vivent dans un logement composé d’une ou deux pièces. L’étude menée par Annick Pardailhé-Galabrun sur un corpus de 2 783 inventaires après décès parisiens, datés de 1600 à 1790, révèle que 31 % des foyers recensés ont un logement à pièce unique, 42 % un logement de deux ou trois pièces, et 20 % un logement de quatre à sept pièces. Seuls 7 % des Parisiens dont les biens ont fait l’objet d’un inventaire vivent dans un logement de plus de sept pièces. La question de la pièce du repas ne se pose donc pas pour les trois quarts des Parisiens de l’Ancien Régime : possédant moins de quatre pièces, appelées la plupart du temps « chambres », ils devaient se restaurer dans l’une d’entre elles ou à l’extérieur.
Translation - English Until the 17th century, rooms in the home were, regardless of class, “multipurpose spaces” where only the furniture determined the function. As such, depending on the season or the number of guests, the place where meals took place could vary greatly; in the upper-class paradigm, the bedroom, the main hall, or the antechamber could very well have taken on this role, before the dining room became established. The latter consequently experienced a steady process of adoption that would not spread across all social classes until the end of the 18th century. An abundance of social and architectural advancements provided the foundation for this room to develop.
The aim of this article is to analyse the places that served as meal rooms until the end of the Ancien Régime, before understanding the reasons underpinning the adoption of the dining room in French households. The otherwise unpublished ideas presented here are largely a result of doctoral work that I defended in December 2017.
Until the turn of the 19th century, most French people lived in a dwelling comprising one or two rooms. The study led by Annick Pardailhé-Galabrun on a set of 2,783 Paris postmortal inventories, dating from 1600 to 1790, revealed that 31% of recorded households had dwellings of a single room, 42% had two or three rooms, and 20% had four to seven rooms. Only 7% of Parisians whose properties were subject to an inventory lived in a dwelling of more than seven rooms. There was therefore no question of a meal room for three-quarters of Parisians living during the Ancien Régime; having fewer than four rooms, most of the time called “chambers”, they had to dine either in one of these or outside.
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Years of experience: 10. Registered at ProZ.com: Feb 2020. Became a member: Jan 2023.
I am a French to English professional freelance translator with a Translation Studies Degree from Durham University and an undergraduate degree in French and Linguistics from the University of Leeds.
I have several years experience in a variety of fields from business, legal and contractual.
I have almost perfect ratings on Gengo as a pro translator with over 400,000 words translated for them that you can see at https://gengo.com/hire/profile/212310/
To see an example of my work, visit www.factem.com (all my translation)
Member since Jan '23
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