Le mardi 25 Juillet 2006 12:50, keith_w a écrit :
> I've had an original lithograph by H. Daumier for a long time.
> It's title is "Ami de Personne."
> My wife recently had it professionally re-framed for a present!
>
> All of a sudden, the new matting exposes a few lines of French below the
> lithograph, and I would like to know what it says...
>
> Surely someone here can help...
>
> "En v’ là un, il pourrait bien être malheureux comme les pierres,
> que je lui donnerais pas pour un sou d'ouvrage."
This is a transcription of low-class, popular, XIXth century, spoken french.
Unlike what Simon said (but it wasn't an easy guess if you're not french
born), «v'» stands for a contraction of «voila». But Simon was correct in
noting that the first part of the full negative form was missing in the
second half of the sentence. That's a slang shorthand, much like the modern
american "I ain't gonna..."
The translation as a whole could be "this guy, he could be into the slough of
despond, I ain't gonna give him 1 penny worth of work".
(unsure my translation renders the colloquial feeling accurately).
--
Manuel Viet
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