Translation please

[AlexBell]

I hope it's acceptable to post in English, but I've lost nearly all the French I learned when I worked in Canada.

I'm preparing an ebook for the MobileRead library of the poems of Siegfried Sassoon which has a dedication in French, and I'd like to put a footnote to an English translation.

Could anyone translate the text below into English please?

Dans la trêve desolée de cette matinée, ces hommes
qui avaient été tenaillés par la fatigue, fouettés par
la pluie, bouleversés par toute une nuit de tonnerre,
ces rescapés des volcans et de l'inondation entrevoyaient
à quel point la guerre, aussi hideuse au moral
qu'au physique, non seulement viole le bon sens, avilit
les grandes idées, commande tous les crimes--mais ils
se rappelaient combien elle avait développé en eux et
autour d'eux tous les mauvais instincts sans en excepter
un seul; la méchanceté jusqu'au sadisme,
l'égoisme jusqu'à la férocité, le besoin de jouir jusqu'à
la folie. HENRI BARBUSSE. (Le Feu.)

[samhy]

The book has been translated as "Under Fire", if I'm not mistaken. If someone can find it, you'll have the official translation.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by samhy

The book has been translated as "Under Fire", if I'm not mistaken. If someone can find it, you'll have the official translation.

Thanks for your response. The Siegfried Sassoon book I've preparing is Counter-Attack and Other Poems so I guess you must mean the book by Henri Barbusse. I'll search for it.

[samhy]

Yep, sorry for not being clear enough. Le feu by Henri Barbusse has an official translation. Maybe the safest way to go

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by samhy

Yep, sorry for not being clear enough. Le feu by Henri Barbusse has an official translation. Maybe the safest way to go

I've found some references for it, even an html version on the net. But the section I want translated seems to be embedded in the book - a quotation from 'Under Fire.' So right now I don't know how to find it.

It doesn't really matter to me whether it's an 'official' translation or not. It would still be a lot better than one done Google Translate, or one done me, a dictionary, and my memory from twelve years ago.

[Arios]

Hi Alex,

I'm a little late to the party!

Did you find the translation?

Anyway, looks here:

In their troubled truce of the morning, these men whom fatigue had tormented, whom rain had scourged, whom night-long lightning had convulsed, these survivors of volcanoes and flood began not only to see dimly how war, as hideous morally as physically, outrages common sense, debases noble ideas and dictates all kind of crime, but they remembered how it had enlarged in them and about them every evil instinct save none, mischief developed into lustful cruelty, selfishness into ferocity, the hunger for enjoyment into a mania.

Ref: http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/wwone/uf24.html

[AlexBell]

Many thanks, Arios. Yes, I had it done on another forum, and it's already up in the MobileRead library.