Translation help please

Henri Matisse a été un artiste qui est né Décembre trente et unième, dix-huit cent soixante neuf en la France du nord. Il a été principalement un peintre, mais il a produit aussi les sculptures et les collages.

Son succès premier est venu en dix-neuf cent quatre quand il a été un membre d'un groupe du peintres qui se sont appelés "Les Fauves." Il a continué créer des œuvres caractérisé par couleurs brillantes et les images hardis jusqu'à son mort en dix-neuf cent cinquante huit.

C’est un exemple de l'œuvre de Matisse: une reproduction d'un collage appelé Icarus, que représente la légende grecque de la jeunesse qui a volé trop près au soleil et il a fondu les ailes son père lui a fait.

This is what I'm trying to say:

Henri Matisse was an artist born in northern France on December 31, 1869. He was primarily a painter, but also produced sculptures and works of collage. His first success came in 1904, when he was part of a group of painters dubbed Les Fauves. He continued to produce work known for its bright colours and bold images until his death in 1958.

[I'll be showing the item mentioned below:]

This is an example of Matisse’s work: a reproduction of a collage called “Icarus,” which depicts the Greek legend of the youth who flew too close to the sun and melted his man-made wings.

Merci en avance pour ton aide.

Regards,

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Permalink Reply by Pamela Kingfisher on February 15, 2010 at 12:31pm

du peintres would not be correct, since peintres is plural but wouldnt it be de peintres? partitif since we don't know exactly how many painters?
Pam

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 15, 2010 at 1:00pm

Remember with dates in French, you put the day number before the month (as in UK English), and you generally just use the ordinary number, not the form ending in ième. So you would say le trente-en-un décembre. Note that in writing, it's much more usual to write the day in figures: le 31 décembre. Exception: the first of the month is lusually le premier, written le 1er.

Be careful of en: when it means "in", you don't usually use the article afterwards (and never with country names). So: en France. In this particular case, to say "in the north of France", just translate it literally as dans le nord de la France (you usually only use en ... du nord with names of continents, e.g. en Afrique du Nord). Same with years: just write it in figures.

For a "general description" in the past, use the imperfect (était rather than a été).

Yes, des scultures et des collages-- he didn't produce every one in the world!

It's worth looking words up in your dictionary to check structure, to find out e.g. that you don't need un in lorsqu'il était membre de..., or to check the constructure continuer a/de de faire (you can actually use either a or de in this case, but you need one of the two), près de. (Actually, in this particular case, I think it would be more idiomatic to phrase it differently, e.g.: il s'est trop approché du soleil.)

After par in this case, put the article: par des couleurs brillantes.

Be careful of genders and adjective agreements.

When you're actually pointing to something you would usually say ceci est.. for "this is...".

The very last part doesn't make sense (and doesn't say what your English version says). However you end up phrasing it, note in particular that whereas you can miss out "that" in English, you can't miss out que in French.

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Permalink Reply by Al Graham on February 15, 2010 at 6:27pm

Thanks Neil and Pam

I wasn't happy with the last sentence, but couldn't figure out how to make it better. Neil, when you mention que do you mean it should replace qui in this last sentence? Also, can you suggest a way of saying man-made? The only words I could come up with were synthétique or artificiel, and neither seemed to have the same meaning.

Regards,
Al

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 16, 2010 at 5:30pm

If you don't like artificielle(which I think is OK, just that ailes artificielles is a little awkward phonetically because both words end with the same sound combination), there is also the word factice. I suppose it's sliightly negative (closer to "immitation" in English), but could work. Otherwise if you go with your version, you need to insert que, for example: il s'est trop approché du soleil, faisant fondre les ailes que son père lui avait faites. Notice that in this case, the norm in formal writing is that you add an agreement to faites. (In everyday spoken French, it would be usual to say "...que son père lui avait fait" without the agreement.)