Dans les coulisses du Moulin Rouge

"Dans les coulisses du Moulin Rouge" has been shared to the blog from the French reading practice section of the learning library where you can find a large selection of interactive texts to help you with your reading skills.


French reading practice: A2
French listening practice: B1

The Moulin Rouge is a world-famous revue in Paris. Take a look behind the scenes and sequins with this video report. Click any French phrase in the transcript for the translation and links to related grammar lessons.

Click any word in the text to see its translation and related grammar lessons.

Le Moulin Rouge

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Author info

Aurélie Drouard

Aurélie is our resident French Expert. She has created most of the wonderful content you see on the site and is usually the person answering your tricky help questions. She comes from a small village near Chartres in Central France, country of cereal fields and not much else. She left (in a hurry) to study English at the world-famous Sorbonne in Paris, before leaving France in 2007 to experience the “London lifestyle” - and never looked back! She's worked as a professional French teacher, translator and linguist in the UK since.  She loves to share her love of languages and is a self-professed cinema and literature geek!

Laura K Lawless

Laura is a French expert and Kwiziq's Head of Quality Control. Online educator since '99, Laura is passionate about language, travel, and cooking. She's American by birth and a permanent ex-pat by choice - freelancing made it possible for her to travel extensively and live in several countries before settling permanently in Guadeloupe. Laura is the author of Lawless French, Lawless Spanish, and other websites and books on French, Spanish, Italian, English, and vegetarianism. She spends most of her spare time reading, playing with food, and enjoying water sports.

Comments: 6

What an operation! It's a privilege to get behind the scenes.

Qu'est-ce que disent les trois femmes à 04:36?

Bonjour Chris !

Femme 1: [Il] faut que tu le fasses maintenant, parce que...
You have to do it now, because...
Femme 2: Ouais, allez !
Yeah, go on!
Toutes les 3 : Power, tsss !

It seems to be their pre-performance ritual :)

Bonne journée !

D'accord, merci beaucoup !

On such a fine website as this one, I was surprised to find such an elementary English grammatical error as the translation "there's [!] a lot of splits". (And why is this particular mistake rampant in English, now? Overcorrection, I believe, for it is much easier to pronounce the correct "there're").

We agree "there are a lot of splits" is probably a better translation for "il y a beaucoup d'ecarts". However, this actually stimulated some debate in the team as "there's a lot of splits" isn't grammatically incorrect. "Splits" in English can be read in the generic activity sense (so i.e. in the same sense as "there's a lot of dancing"). One could equally say, "there is a lot of 'people-doing-splits'" or "there are a lot of [people doing] splits". The nuance is different, but both are grammatically correct. As you've noted though, there is a trend towards people using "there's" with a true plural case following in speech which is probably because it's less of a mouthful.