Mademoiselle Holmes S01E03, "Sortie de route"

Mademoiselle Holmes S01E03, "Sortie de route" (Left The Road), runtime 48:28

Subtitles download link

This time I'm trying something a little different. I have no French subtitles to start from for most of Season 1 of Mademoiselle Holmes, such is the case with about a third of my subtitling projects. In such situations I have to translate it using my ears and Google Translate. But this time I thought I would try the Vosk audio transcription add-on for Subtitle Edit. Yes, I know many say Whisper is better, and maybe it is but I can't get it to work at an acceptable speed (20-36 hours to process one 90 minute file is ridiculous). Even if Vosk doesn't get the words right, I'm hoping it will at least get the slots and timings correct and I'll save some time. I'll sum-up at the end.

The mystery at the center of "Sortie de route" concerns the car accident death (immolated following an engine explosion) of Anthony Sinçon, brother-in-law of Charlie's old friend Nicolas Belliard.

Charlie and Samy are greeted by a kid armed with a banana

Something about the circumstances feels off to Charlie. Chris and Florence first suspect Nicolas, then his wife Suzy, a mechanic, then Roxane, Nicolas’s former mistress/current stalker. Charlie naturally just wants to help her friends. Florence's cool private eye sister Muriel pops in.

The plot has an element of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Bruce-Partington Plans," except the victim dies by falling from a train, and there were missing submarine plans.

It occurs to me that perhaps Muriel is meant to be the Mycroft analog, but Florence's sibling rival rather than Charlie's.

NOTES

Alas, Nico (1'02") isn't the Nico from the Crime Squad in Paris. Say, a Mme. Holmes-Astrid et Raphelle crossover could be fun.

Yes, it's Anthony and not Antoine (3'02").

Un deux trois soleil, '1 - 2 - 3 - sun' (5'20"), is a playground game that's kind of like freeze tag. Ba a-ba means 'basic' or 'ABC.'

Florence-ism: On est pas la pour epiler les kiwi, 'We're not here to wax kiwis,' is hilarious and I don't know what it means.

Chris and Suzy's exchange about her being a mechanic (6'26") is another instance of sentences with masculine and feminine nouns not making sense in English. He calls her a mecanicien (masc.), and she corrects him, she's a mecanicienne (fem.). Discussing the difference again doesn't make sense in English.

Boutons, 'buttons' (9'27"), also means 'pimples.'

Roxane Strawberry's kid's name is Titan (10'30")? Mmkay.

Y mange bien cinq fruits et légumes par jour, 'Eat five fruits and vegetables per day!' (10'55") was the slogan of a 2003 public nutrition campaign in a number of countries including France.

Roxane says Je suis rapidement passé à autre chose, 'I quickly moved on to something else' (11'44"). I really wanted her to say 'someone else,' but she clearly says chose (thing/something) and not quelqu'un (someone).

Berthouille 2 (12'05") is a prop; the author on the cover, Franck Benezech, is Mademoiselle Holmes's art director. He also worked on City of Lost Children (1995).

Chris says Ouais, j'ai fait les décodeurs, au collègue, 'Yeah, I did the decoders, partner' (20'10"). I don't know what decodeurs means in this context, in our era it commonly means 'fact-checking,' but I think that's a fairly recent usage. I can only guess it's a proper noun, maybe a book or a police sexism awareness class, judging by Jess's rejoinder. In which case, by calling Jess's observation an oxymoron, Chris thinks he's calling her sexist. Which is perfect for the way Chris is being defined as a character.

(21'29"): Why is Samy the forensics trainee helping question Nicolas?

Another Florence-ism: Faut pas pousser mémé-- 'Don't push Grandma' (22'80").

24'09": Samy tells Muriel that he's a médecin à la liste, 'listed doctor.' I think that means practicing or accredited, but I'm leaving it out.

Croquette (26'21"), Muriel's pet name for Florence, means 'kibble' or 'doodle' (noun), among other things.

28'04": Chris says ouais but pronounces it 'wa.' I'm putting " 'kay" (apostrophe-kay) instead of 'yeah' because he sounded flip. Then at 30'09" it sounds like Charlie is saying Je te verrai plus tard, ‘I’ll see you later,’ but contracted as Je’plus tard. So I put " 'Later" (apostrophe-Later).

35’08”: Pringles, yuck.

36’17”: I was this many years old when I found out the last name of Cruella De Vil is ‘devil’ split in two. It was when Samy says, April Moriarty c'est la fille cachée de Darth Vader et Cruella D'Enfer [Cruella from hell].

I’m assuming Charlie says J’irai, ‘I’ll go’ (37’01”), and contracts it to J’.

I’m stumped when Nicolas clearly says, j'ai crié qu'il avait rencontré quelqu'un, ‘I shouted that he had met someone’ (41’42”). Which doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it was j’ai ecrit (I wrote). No. So I put something that makes sense.

Charlie could be saying so many things at 41’56”. It sounds like fallait, ‘had to/should be,’ or pas-something, or parlé, ‘spoke/spoke about.’ I did my best.

It’s still hilarious to me that baguettes are chopsticks (46’05”).

It occurs to me that Muriel’s presence might give Charlie the idea of becoming a private detective. We’ll see if it happens when I get to season 2.

Vosk performed better than I expected, even though I doubt it saved me much time. French when clearly spoken was mostly transcribed correctly, sometimes amazingly so. It is often confounded by homophones, not unexpected. Muddy sound and line readings were sometimes amusingly erroneous— 5 points out of 10.

Sometimes Vosk is very, very good, while other times...

The slots and timings weren't off by much, fractions of seconds, but enough that I had to adjust the start and/or end times of almost all of them. So maybe only a little time saved there— 5 points out of 10.

Florence-isms count: 2
Total: 4