French podcast recommendations

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A couple of French podcast recommendations to start the week! I find podcasts really helpful for keeping up my French listening skills, and particularly for listening to people talking in an unscripted way, or with specific accents that I want to practice with. It’s easy enough to find scripted/”clean” French audio online, but that’s often not the reality we encounter when we’re interpreting, so it’s good to listen to some less “curated” stuff as well (at least in my experience!).

🎤I really love the France Culture show “Les Pieds sur terre.” https://lnkd.in/gNUWD_aa Their tagline is “Une demi-heure de reportage sans commentaire,” and that’s basically what it is: teenage girls talking about what it’s like to have a transgender parent; people in their 80s talking about the best and worst parts of being old; a Sudanese migrant talking about what it’s like to live on a hay farm in France. It’s all over the map, which is my favorite thing about the show.

🎤 Le Short from RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse), a five-minute daily podcast on various Swiss news items, or the Swiss take on world news items. A recent one was about the shortage of young cheese-makers in Switzerland (what passes for a national crisis there 😅) and how they’re inviting francophone West Africans to come be cheese-making interns in Switzerland. https://lnkd.in/gHJbthut

🎤Learn Quebec French, not so much a podcast about learning French per se, but about Quebec French specifically. I really love interpreting for the Canadian market (lots of interesting work!), but the accent can be a challenge if you’re not used to it. This podcast is quick (under 10 minutes per episode) and focuses on a specific aspect of Quebec French, most recently the pronunciation of the sounds “du,” “di,” “tu,” and “ti.” The show doesn’t seem to have its own website but here’s the Apple Podcasts listing: https://lnkd.in/gPKwDDid

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. She holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College, is an ATA-certified French to English translator, and is Colorado court-certified for French interpreting. If you enjoy her posts, consider joining the Training for Translators mailing list!