I had an odd reaction to the translation. "Smarmily" and "howlers" don't seem right to me -- either unFrench, or unProustian.

It's not because I think that they're bad translations for "mielleusement" and "cuirs". I have no knowledge about that.

It's ridiculous, of course, to say that French should be translated into French-seeming English. I guess it's because the diction doesn't seem Proustian. But I have no way of knowing that either. Maybe it's because "smarmy" and "howler" are to me ethnicly reserved to Anglophones, even though the French equivalents might be very similiar in their diction.

My reaction is really unexplainable and wrong, I think, but quite strong.

Hmm, until this, I'd only heard "cuir" used (as far as pronunciation is concerned, at least) in a much more specific sense: an attempt to use a /t/ to form a liaison where either liaison is forbidden or there's no written "d" nor "t." I wonder if perhaps in the quote, the narrator is using "cuir" in this more specific sense, and then the later prose is generalizing the term or using a metaphor or metonymy?

Just curious, and this is undoubtedly the best place to ask - I was under the impression that the Germanic language spoken by the Franks exerted the most decisive influence upon the pronunciation of French. Are there any studies which investigate the Celtic and Germanic influence upon French phonology? What were their conclusions?

I agree with you about the two disputed terms John. "Howler" seems as jarring and incongruous as the term "goodies", for booty or plunder, in Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights.

"Smarmily" just strikes me as being clumsy.