The French language, in all subtlety. “The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off” is one of the shocking sentences pronounced Emmanuel Macrondin an interview with Parisian, published Tuesday evening, found an echo beyond the French borders.
The Head of State has returned to his provocative accents, in the midst of the Covid-19 epidemic and three months before the presidential election for which he said he also “wanted” to stand again.
In the midst of a heated debate in the Assembly on the future vaccine pass, it was with these harsh words that he assumed he wanted to establish “almost an obligation to vaccinate”. A choice of vocabulary which, in addition to setting off his opponents, has pushed journalists from non-French-speaking media to strain their brains to find the right translation, in their language, of this term so common in the language of Molière and unknown in theirs.
“We need the shit”
On the English-speaking side, some have opted for a timid ” annoy “, Like the American CNBC, who writes that” Macron arouses indignation by promising to annoy [« annoy » peut aussi se traduire par « ennuyer »] the unvaccinated ”. The agency
Associated Press is more suggestive by indicating that “with salty language, Macron reprimands the unvaccinated of France. »The very serious New York Times, he put on a polite paraphrase: “Macron under fire from critics after declaring that France should make life miserable for the unvaccinated.” “In the article,” pissed off “is translated as” piss off ” (” piss “).
A translation challenged by Lauren Collins, journalist for New Yorker : “‘Piss off’ doesn’t do it for me”,
she tweets, adding in
a second message : “We need the shit” [est-ce utile de traduire ?]. Even if you do not speak English, it will not have escaped you that the verb “piss off” refers to the fact of urinating and not that of “covering with excrement” implied by the etymology of the term used by the chef. of State.
Across the Channel, if the Guardian has joined the “team” piss off “”, the BBC remains polite (“Macron warns that he is going to bother [“hassle“] France of the unvaccinated ”).
Italians say Macron wants to “break the heads” of the unvaccinated
On the other side of the Rhine, Die welt There goes a nice “Macron wants to annoy the unvaccinated” without ever mentioning, in
article published online, the triviality of the term used by the French president. The tabloid Das Bild translated “piss off” by the verb ” schikanieren ”Which presents an etymological proximity to our“ quibble ”. In Goethe’s language, it means “to annoy”, “to intimidate”, “to harass” … Note that this popular readable newspaper did not headline on the vulgar expression of Emmanuel Macron, but on the rest of his statement : “I’m not going to [les non-vaccinés] put in jail, [mais]… ”.
In Italy, the online daily Today title on Emmanuel Macron’s desire to “annoy” (“far arabbiare “) The unvaccinated, and then writes more frontally:” I really want to break their heads “(” Ho molta voglia di rompergli the p *** “). The article emphasizes that the Head of State “used a flowery and untranslatable term” in Italian and added: “” Piss off “, the etymology does not lie. ” The Corriere della Sera also used the expression
“Breaking the c * uilles” in title but, in the article, the transalpine daily prefers the softer expression “rompere le skatole” (in a way the equivalent of our “breaking the candies”, “annoying”).
“Make life impossible”
Let’s finish this press review in Spain where El Pais made in the consensual translation by writing that the French president intends “to make life impossible for those who are not vaccinated in order to make them change their opinion”.
The daily still uses the term ” yodel “, Which means” to fuck “or” shit “and can also be understood as” to piss off “. Friends of poetry, you can now go read Ronsard.