Chignole, dog’s leg chisel, vastringue, varlope, tarabiscot, Japanese chamfering plane, gauge with millimeter roller, this is Vincent Roy’s daily life. He does not earn his living by working with wood – although that is one of his hobbies – he sculpts an otherwise difficult material: words.
Vincent Roy, 63 years old, has been since 2010 the main architect of the French adaptation of the website and catalogs of Lee Valley, a family business in Ottawa which distributes, manufactures and, sometimes, invents high quality tools and accessories, especially for woodworking.
The company is led by CEO Robin Lee. His wife, Lucie Robitaille, manages customer service. A few years before the opening of the first Lee Valley store in Quebec, Ms. Robitaille defined the francization mandate for Lee Valley entrusted to Francisation InterGlobe (FIG), of Montreal, in 2010.
“It was quite a deal! », notes Ms. Robitaille, with pride. “Vincent Roy was the very first employee of the francization team. We knew him, he had worked for years as an editor at the Réno-Bricolage magazine. He is a calm, conscientious man who is an exceptional listener and who remembers all the details. »
Mr. Roy and two other former FIG employees now work for Lee Valley.
Moreover, it was Mr. Roy’s former boss at FIG who suggested it to La Presse: “We closed FIG in 2021, but for more than 10 years, my partners and I were able to count on a exceptional man,” says Bernard Brisset of Nos. “He was at the center of a team of 10 terminologists and translators who translated the entire catalog. He did quite a job! »
Lee Valley is a very unusual hardware store and its catalog of tools looks like an art magazine. Its site is almost encyclopedic, with the thousands of tools and accessories having at least a short description. Some tools are very beautiful, very specialized and the choice is vast. Are you looking for router bits to open furniture pieces? The author of these lines found 79 varieties (he stopped counting there). There are marvels there, such as the high-end trusquin handmade in Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies in small series by cabinetmaker François Cullen with pink wood from South America (this beautiful object is used to draw a parallel line at the edge of a piece of wood).
Before 2010, the Lee Valley catalogs and website were in English only.
In addition to the quantity of material to adapt, “there were some problem cases” with terminology, says Mr. Roy, who studied French literature and took violin-making and cabinet-making courses. “In Quebec, the world of tools has one foot in Europe and the other in American culture. The tools come mainly from the United States and, often, the French terms do not correspond to the nature and use of the tool offered here. »
Many terms forgotten or never used on this side of the Atlantic have been found in old French dictionaries. But it was necessary to adapt and invent terms respecting the technical logic of each object and the genius of the French language. A long and costly work of terminology.
The austere auto-adjust toggle clamp became the sparkling “auto-adjust toggle clamp” (a clamping tool used to hold a part to be drilled or routed), while the indigestible bevel-up jack rabbet plane became the melliflu “riflard rabbet” (a long plane, but not as big as a jack). The log peavey, an obscure name for the uninitiated, became “spur log turner”, which better indicates that this type of harpoon equipped with a hook is used to move logs of wood.
Certain terms, as we see, are very original and caused a sensation when the French site of Lee Valley made its way to Quebec after 2010, increasing its clientele of craftsmen, cabinetmakers and passionate DIYers.
A man named Pierre Foglia spoke about it twice in La Presse in 2014, marveling at the “hardware poetry” of Lee Valley’s catalog, “a gentle music” and “a rare homage to our language”, compared to the “rough catalogs from Rona and other Home Depot”.
Another tribute, of another kind, Circuit, the journal of the Order of approved terminologists, translators and interpreters of Quebec, asked Mr. Roy for a case study on Lee Valley, which was published in 2017.
Mr. Roy recognizes that his job requires creativity, but he says he prioritizes rigor above all: “I often tell myself that we are read by our clients, people who know this better than us. »
He also repeats that he loves his job and that he is lucky to practice it in a company where we focus on the quality of French.
“We still receive emails from customers who are delighted with the beauty of the French words or who tell us that the catalog is on their bedside table,” says Mr. Roy. But it happens less often now, as if people now take it for granted. »
This is a reassuring thought, at a time when we still often hear people in Quebec talking about drills, grinders and crowdbars.
For Christmas, we wish them to receive a Lee Valley catalog and be tempted by a flat-nosed guillaume, a carver’s adze or, why not? a diamond hole saw for slate.
