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French Idiom


crépuscule
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I've just spent half hour looking through idioms and I could find was this.

  1. (Proverbes)
  2. Dog eat dog : Les loups ne se font pas de cadeaux (cf. au-dessus).

  • Every dog has its day : À chacun son heure, Chacun aura son jour de gloire.

  • To let sleeping dogs lie : Ne pas réveiller le chat qui dort.

  • Why keep a dog and bark yourself ? : Pourquoi faire faire aux autres ce que vous pouvez faire par vous-même ?

  • You can’t teach an old dog new tricks : Ce n’est pas aux vieux singes qu’on n’apprend à faire des grimaces.

 

I'm going to read a story to my daughter but I can't see anymore[:)]

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So I don't get a little thank-you for that?  [:(]

Now I'm wondering if maybe when members see me posting on a serious thread they think -

 "Oh God!  It's that daft singing fairy again - she's probably making a silly joke or talking absolute codwallop  so I won't bother looking to see what she's got to say"

 

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[quote user="TWINKLE"]

 

  • Why keep a dog and bark yourself ? : Pourquoi faire faire aux autres ce que vous pouvez faire par vous-même ?

[/quote]

It's probably my French comprehension but doesn't the French proverb mean the opposite of the English one?

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Yes but look at translations of most idioms to french and  they aren't literally translated word for word.  I'm sure it's the same regarding any other language.  I thought crepiscule wanted the equivalent of this idiom. 

Oh well - that's the last time I try and get serious on here[;-)]

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I was the person who asked the self same question (as correctly rembered) sometime towards the end of last year - and much of the same answers came up then, but I agree, I believe it means why do something yourself if there is someone else can do it better (my hubby often uses it, and he means exactly that = why should I do it, when you can do it better, have more experience in doing, it can do it more quickly etc (sewing buttons on his shirts comes to mind - he is perfectly capable of doing it, but knows I do it both better and more quickly!!), so the French expression as quoted says entirely the opposite .  However, as another poster said, often the French expression does turn out to say entirely the opposite, or uses some other entirely different context to say the same thing - raining cats and dogs being one of those!

We often discuss how the actual meaning of words cannot be compared - it is often impossible to get the nuance of the meaning across, even when the words themselves are correct, because of inbuilt cultural differences etc.  And trying to describe cricket to the French (we have tried, when we took some to see a match) is well nigh impossible as the words do not exist in French - lots of paper was used and we were into diagrams - but it was all great fun and somewhere along the way the general idea of the game was understood!

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[quote user="TWINKLE"]

Yes but look at translations of most idioms to french and  they aren't literally translated word for word.  I'm sure it's the same regarding any other language.  I thought crepiscule wanted the equivalent of this idiom. 

Oh well - that's the last time I try and get serious on here[;-)]

[/quote]

But it's not a question of word for word translation or equivalence; the two proverbs are exact opposites. The English version means " why do something yourself when you've got someone who'll do it for you better". The French surely means "why get someone to do something for you when you could do it yourself".

I wonder if there's some interesting psychological difference netween the French and British mindsets illustrated by this?

(Sorry Judith, just realised that you said the same thing.)

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[quote user="KathyC"][

I wonder if there's some interesting psychological difference netween the French and British mindsets illustrated by this?

[/quote]

Yes - the French wouldn't spend half the time us lot have spent on a subject like this one[;-)]

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I'm very very lost on here.

Being a bit lazy, I thought that this was sort of my sort of saying. ie why bark yourself when you have a dog to do it. Why do anything when you have someone else to do it.

That is what I thought it meant. If it doesn't that doesn't suit me at all. Not that my dog really barks, but if it needs doing, I'd rather she did.

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