Please help with a correct translation!

[Vanessa B]

Hi,

 

I have been trying to translate 'circus of collage' (meaning art collages) into French and have found most of the online translation tools give the translation as 'cirque de collage' whereas google translate gives it as 'cirque, du collage'.

 

Which is correct? I would prefer to use 'cirque de collage' but I just wanted to know if this sounds completely incorrect...

 

Thanks for any help you can give me!

 

Vanessa

 

:-)

[Erwan]

I've never heard about cirque de collage in French. May be art du collage can match?

[Vanessa B]

Thank you for your help, it's a name I would like to use for a collection of my artwork. It's supposed to be a made-up name which is just a bit whimsical... circus of collage. I just don't know whether to use 'de' or 'du' because I don't understand anything about French grammar!

 

Any more input would be greatly appreciated :-)

 

Thanks again!

[Abuzer Karpuz]

I suggest "cercle de collage". 

[Neil Coffey]

It's not clear exaactly what you're trying to say by "circus of collage", but how about something like "Le carrefour du collage"?

The problem with "cirque" in French is that it really does mean "circus" as in acrobatics and elephants, whereas "circus" in English can have a wider meaning. So I would be tempted not to think so literally.

[Sarah]

(In advance, sorry for my english, i'm french XD)

In french, "cirque de collage" do not exist and It want to say nothing.

I supose, the good term that you look for is "l'art du collage".

But, this term has several meanings. In which sentence want to be use it ?

[Vanessa B]

Thank you all for your help and suggestions, I greatly appreciate it. I know there is the famous Cirque Du Soleil which is a whimsical kind of name and I just wanted to go with the same kind of theme as that. I am making small pieces of art collaging animals onto paper, along with other images, in a kind of haphazard way... which is why I felt the name Cirque De Collage conjured up the correct images in the mind.

In a way it doesn't really matter too much if it doesn't make sense as it's just a name. So I suppose if it doesn't really make sense anyway then it doesn't matter if I use a 'de' or a 'du'?

[Neil Coffey]

Well, "Cirque du soleil" makes sense in the sense that it is the name of an actual circus-- from that point of view, it isn't juuust a whimsical random string of words. (Though yes, they may as well have called it "Cirque de la lune", "Cirque de l'étoile", "Cirque du chien", "Cirque du désespoir" etc for all the choice of words really matters.)

If your intention is to conjur up the notion of "Cirque du soleil" to an English speaker and you don't care that the French phrase makes no sense whatsoever to a French speaker, then I suppose call it "Cirque du collage".

For what it's worth, the difference between "de" and "du" is that "de" would imply "made out of collage", whereas "du" would imply "named after/belonging to/representing collage". But neither make terribly much sense, so perhaps you may as well pick "du" because then it more strongly resembles "Cirque du soleil"...

[Vanessa B]

Neil, thank you SO much for all your help and detailed replies.

That's the real thing that I was getting at... the difference between 'de' and 'du' and you have really helped me to understand. Thank you! I will have a think about it and pick one of them.

Have a nice day!