Background:
Alice in Wonderland is by Lewis Carroll, formerly known as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Nineteenth-century English writer, a church deacon and a mathematics teacher at Christ's College, Oxford. Carol was shy and suffered from severe stuttering and lived a single life for the rest of her life. But he has a wide range of interests, including novels, poetry, mathematical logic puzzles, children's photography, etc.
One summer day in 1862, Carroll led three daughters of the Dean of Christ's College, Oxford, on a boat trip on the River Thames. While taking a nap on the riverbank for tea, he made up a fantasy story for the children, and the protagonist's name was derived from the most clever and cute seven-year-old Alice, the sisters.
After returning home, Carol wrote the story at Alice's request and personally illustrated it to Alice. Soon after, the novelist Henry Kingsley discovered the manuscript, and he was amazed by the imagination of the story. With his encouragement, Carroll further polished the story and published it in 1865 under the title Alice in Wonderland.
Alice in Wonderland tells the story of a little English girl named Alice who accidentally falls down the rabbit hole in pursuit of a talking rabbit with a pocket watch, thus entering a magical country and experiencing a series of fantastic adventures. Since its publication in 1865, Alice in Wonderland has been translated into at least 125 languages, with derivatives in painting, music, theater, costumes, film, television series, radio drama, and games.
At the bottom of the burrow
ALICE, sitting next to her sister on the grass, began to get bored of standing there doing nothing; once or twice she had cast her eyes on the book her sister was reading; But what! no images, no dialogues! "The beautiful advance," Alice thought, "that a book without pictures, without talks!".
Gazon n.m. Meadows
Causerie n.f. small talk
She began to think, (as best she could, because the heat of the day put her to sleep and made her heavy,) wondering if the pleasure of making a crown of daisies was worth getting up and picking the flowers, when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes passed by her.
Couronne n.f. Corolla
There was nothing very surprising there, and Alice did not even find it very extraordinary to hear the Rabbit speak who said to himself: "Ah! I will arrive too late!" (Thinking about it afterwards, it seemed to her that she should have been surprised, but at the time it seemed quite natural to her.) However, when the Rabbit came to pull a watch from his pocket, looked at it, and then began to run more beautifully, Alice jumped on his feet, struck by this idea that she had never seen a rabbit with a gusset and a watch. Driven by curiosity, she set out in her footsteps through the field, and arrived just in time to see him disappear into a wide hole at the foot of a hedge.
Songer v. thought
entraîner v. attract
A moment later, Alice was chasing the Rabbit in the burrow, not thinking about how she would get out of it.
For a long time the hole went straight like a tunnel, then suddenly it plunged perpendicularly so sharply that Alice felt herself falling like in a well of great depth, before she had even thought of holding back.
plonger v. deep
perpendiculairement adv. vertically
One of two things, either the well was really deep, or it fell very gently; for she had all the leisure, in her fall, to look around and wonder with astonishment what she was going to become. First she looked into the bottom of the hole to find out where she was going; but it was far too dark to see anything. Then she looked at the walls of the well, and realized that they were furnished with cabinets and shelves; here and there, she lives hanging from nails of maps and images. As she passed by, she took a jar of jam from a shelf with the label, "MARMALADE D'ORANGES." But, to her great regret, the pot was empty: she did not dare to drop it in fear of killing someone; so she arranged to place it in one of the cabinets.
Chute N.F. fell, fell
Crainte de scared
"Certainly," alice said, "after such a fall I won't make fun of tumbling down the stairs! How brave they will find me at home! I would fall from the rooftops that I wouldn't make a complaint heard." (Which was very likely.)
dégringoler v. tumbled, fell
Fall, fall, fall! "So this fall will not end! I'm curious to know how many miles I've already done," she said out loud. "I must be very close to the center of the earth. So let's see, that would be four thousand miles deep, it seems to me." (As you see, Alice had learned quite a bit in her lessons; and although this was not a very good opportunity to parade her knowledge, since there was no listener, it was nevertheless a good exercise to repeat her lesson.) "Yes, that's about it; but then what degree of latitude or longitude am I?" (Alice had no idea what latitude or longitude meant, but these big words sounded beautiful and sonorous to her.)
Soon she resumed: "If I was going to cross the earth completely? How funny it would be to be in the middle of people walking upside down. To Antipathies, I believe." (She wasn't angry this time that there was no one there to hear her, because that word didn't make her feel like she was right.) "Hey but, I will have to ask them the name of the country.—Sorry, Madam, is this Novaya Zemlya or Australia?" —At the same time she tried to bow out. (What an idea! Bow out in the air! Tell me a little bit, how would you do it?) "'What an ignorant little girl!' the lady will think when I ask her this question. No, we should not ask for that; maybe I'll see it written down somewhere."
fâché adj. Angry, annoyed
Faire la révérence performs a bowed salute
Fall, fall, fall!—So Alice, for lack of anything better to do, started talking to each other again: "Dinah will notice my absence tonight, of course." (Dinah was her cat.) "As long as we don't forget to give him his milk jatte at tea time. Dinah, my kitty, what are you here with me? There are no mice in the air, I am afraid; but you could catch a bat, and it looks a lot like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats?" Here sleep began to win Alice. She repeated, half asleep: "Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?" And sometimes: "Do bats eat cats?" Because you understand that, since she could not answer either of these questions, it did not matter how she asked them. She would doze off and start dreaming that she was walking around holding Dinah by the hand, saying very seriously, "Let's see, Dinah, tell me the truth, have you ever eaten bats?" When all of a sudden, poof! here it is lying on a pile of bundles and dry leaves—and it has finished falling.
s'assoupir v.pr. Lethargic, half asleep and half awake
Fagot n.m
Alice hadn't done herself the slightest harm. Quickly she gets back on her feet and looks up; but everything is black up there. She sees in front of her a long passage and the White Rabbit running with all legs. There is not a moment to lose; Alice leaves like the wind and arrives just in time to hear the Rabbit say, while he turns the corner: "By my mustache and ears, how late it is!" She was only a stone's throw away: but with the corner turned, the Rabbit had disappeared. She was then in a long and low room, lit by a row of lamps hanging from the ceiling.
Courir à toutes jambes run fast
tandis que when... when
There were doors all around the room: these doors were all closed, and, after vainly trying to open the ones on the right side, then those on the left side, Alice walked sadly in the middle of this room, wondering how she would get out.
Suddenly she met on her way a small table with three legs, made of solid glass, and nothing on it but a tiny golden key. Alice immediately thought that it could be that of one of the doors; but alas! either the locks were too big, or the key was too small, she still couldn't open any of them. However, having made a second turn, she saw a curtain placed very low and which she had not seen at first; from behind was still a small door about fifteen inches high; she tried the little golden key at the lock, and to her delight it turned out that she was going perfectly. Alice opened the door, and saw that she was driving in a narrow passage barely wider than a rat hole. She knelt down, and, casting her eyes along the passage, discovered the most delightful garden in the world. Oh! How long he could not wait to come out of this dark room and wander in the middle of these squares of bright flowers, these fresh fountains! But his head couldn't even go through the door. "And still my head would pass through it," Alice thought, "what good would it be without my shoulders? Oh! that I would therefore like to have the ability to close myself like a telescope! Maybe it could be, if I knew how to do it." So many extraordinary things had already happened to her that Alice began to believe that there were hardly any impossible ones.
aussitôt que just one... only...
s'agenouiller v.pr. On your knees
ravissant adj. Extremely beautiful, charming
ténébreux adj. Gloomy, melancholy
guère adv. hardly
As it made no progress to spend her time waiting at the small door, she returned to the table, almost hoping to find another key, or at least some grimoire giving the rules to follow to close like a telescope. This time she found on the table a small bottle (which admittedly was not there just now). On the neck of this small bottle was attached a paper label, with these words "DRINK ME" beautifully printed in large letters.
Tout au moins at least, anyway
Grimoire n.m. Book of Heaven
It's easy to say "Drink me" but Alice was too thin to obey blindly. "Let's look first," she says, "and see if there's written on it 'Poison' or not." For she had read in pretty little tales, that children had been burned, devoured by ferocious beasts, and that other very unpleasant things had happened to them, all for not having remembered the very simple instructions given to them by their parents: for example, that the clothier heated to white burns the hands that hold him too long; that if a deep cut is made on one's finger, it usually bleeds; and she had not forgotten that if one drinks immoderately from a bottle marked "Poison" it does not fail to blur the heart sooner or later.
Obéir v. Obey, obey
à l'aveuglette blindly, recklessly
tisonnier n
immodérément adv
Brouiller v. scramble, make chaos