Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, said the comments by Mr Sapin were “inappropriate”. He added: “France is a really solvent country. France is a really credible country, France is a country that is starting to recover.”
The more they protested their honour the faster we counted the spoons
January 29th, 2013 · 9 Comments
Tags: Johnny Foreigner
9 responses so far ↓
1 William M. Connolley // Jan 29, 2013 at 10:05 am
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” – http://quotationsbook.com/quote/19377/
tim adds: Err, yes William, I do know the quote. It’s an allusion to it, not a repeat of it.
2 sam // Jan 29, 2013 at 10:36 am
Whilst I thoroughly agree with the sentiment, I feel that the rather doth-protest-too-much trainslation ““France is a really solvent country. France is a really credible country, is probably a little misleading. I suspect the word he used was ‘vraiment’, which would be more “france is in fact solvent / credible”
Still a lie, but sounds less like a five year old.
3 bloke in spain // Jan 29, 2013 at 11:32 am
Novel to see DOCTOR William S Connolley (with the ‘e’) & matters of trust on the same page.
4 Philip Walker // Jan 29, 2013 at 11:40 am
sam: indeed it was vraiment: «La France est un pays vraiment solvable, la France est un pays vraiment crédible, la France est un pays qui entame son redressement.» [1] I think it is still modifying the adjective and not the verb, but a better translation might have been ‘truly’.
[1] http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/politique/20130128.OBS6866/pour-sapin-la-france-est-un-etat-totalement-en-faillite.html
5 Diogenes // Jan 29, 2013 at 9:18 pm
the translation seems ok to me – truly or really, intensifying the adjective in each case.
6 Diogenes // Jan 29, 2013 at 11:43 pm
but reember that M Sapin = Mr Toad
7 Diogenes // Jan 30, 2013 at 5:33 am
what did I just say! sapin of course = fir tree.
8 sam // Jan 30, 2013 at 11:07 am
@diogenes of course it’s not an incorrect translation, but the nuance is different in english. Translating it as “really” – whilst technically correct and fairly amusing – makes him sound like a whiny child.
You could go back the other way and translate ‘really’/'truly’ as ‘vraiment’, ‘réellement’, ‘très’, or ‘vachement’ and they would all have slightly different meanings to a french ear.
9 john b // Jan 31, 2013 at 3:06 pm
Vachement would be my favourite one. All governmental and corporate PR should be written in the style of a 13-year-old girl.
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