# nuit blanche



## Cavatine

Listening to the Nougaro's song titled "Le cinéma", where there is a play on words with "sur l'écran noir de mes nuits blanches", I was wondering if there was another way to say "nuit blanche", apart from "sleepless night", and which could be closer to the French expression. In short, would "white night" be correct ? (I guess not though, but I would like to have a confirmation, please.)


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## Kelly B

Je pense que la notion d'une nuit sans sommeil serait perdu si tu écrivais _white nights_ en anglais. De plus, et pire, cela évoque pour moi la phrase _white knights,_ the good guys, ce qui n'a absolument rien à voir.


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## Cavatine

Ah, juste, est-ce que "one night without sleep" pourrait remplacer "sleepless night", si l'on ne veut pas faire de répétition, par exemple ?


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## marget

Une nuit blanche veut dire "sleepless night", "a night without sleep" Pour "j'ai passé la nuit blanche, nous pouvons dire "I stayed up all night". Les étudiants diraient "I pulled an all-nighter".


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## pieanne

I guess it could, or "a night when I couldn't find sleep" (or when sleep couldn't find me). But another way could be, if you've already mentioned a "sleepless night", to say "on one of those nights.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

... but if you're in bed and not sleeping all night long (eyes wide opened), could you say "I stayed up all night" or "I pulled an all-nighter"?


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## cherylemailed

for a student who stays up all night studying, we can say "burning the midnight oil"...


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## timpeac

KaRiNe_Fr said:
			
		

> ... but if you're in bed and not sleeping all night long (eyes wide opened), could you say "I stayed up all night" or "I pulled an all-nighter"?


 
No - those phrases suggest that you were doing something else instead of trying to sleep.


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## marget

..."but if you're in bed and not sleeping all night long (eyes wide opened), could you say "I stayed up all night" or "I pulled an all-nighter"?"

We can say "I stayed up all night, it doesn't have to mean "debout".  It can just mean "awake".  We may also say "I was awake or up all night" without having left the bed.  "I pulled an all-nighter", when a student says it,  means that I did not sleep a wink because I was studying or doing homework.  

I was just offering alternatives, but I didn't specify the context, and as we all know, everything depends on context.  I hope nobody will lose any sleep over this!


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## timpeac

marget said:
			
		

> We can say "I stayed up all night, it doesn't have to mean "debout". It can just mean "awake".


 
But not that you were trying to sleep - or at least in my usage. If I heard someone say "I stayed up all night" then I would ask "why, what were you doing?". At the very least I would expect they were reading or watching TV (even if in bed or even if they couldn't sleep). Personally, if I was lying in the darkness just unable to sleep all night I wouldn't call that "staying up all night".


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## olliemae

What about "a night of insomnia"?


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## rosieg

timpeac said:


> No - those phrases suggest that you were doing something else instead of trying to sleep.



Et ceci à cause du mot "up". If you are "up" you are not in bed. A mother can say to her kids, What are you doing still up? Why aren't you in bed?


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## rosieg

What about "wakeful nights"? Ou "restless nights" qui est plus implicite?


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## Cat'

l'insomnie est une maladie, qui conduit certe à passer des nuits blanches.... mais ce n'est pas le même context


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## timpeac

Cat' said:


> l'insomnie est une maladie, qui conduit certe à passer des nuits blanches.... mais ce n'est pas le même context


Yes, I agree - "insomnia" is a medical term, so saying you "had a night of insomnia", although understandable, sounds strange because it sounds as if you had a single night of an actual illness, rather than a temporary affliction of the symptoms of insomnia. Similarly you couldn't, or wouldn't, say "I was an insomniac last night" just because it so happens you couldn't sleep last night.


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## alisonp

"White nights" (there's a film by that name) is also a term used for summer nights in very northern (European) latitudes where the sun doesn't actually set (and people consequently often can't sleep - have you seen "Insomnia"?).  They have a White Nights arts festival in St. Petersburg, for example.

I'm not sure whether that helps in your context, though.


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## marget

rosieg said:


> Et ceci à cause du mot "up". If you are "up" you are not in bed. A mother can say to her kids, What are you doing still up? Why aren't you in bed?


 
I still feel that I could say to someone "Are you still up"? if I simply meant awake, even if the person were lying in bed.  Maybe it's a quirky usage on my part.


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## Teafrog

Cavatine said:


> Ah, juste, est-ce que "one night without sleep" pourrait remplacer "sleepless night", si l'on ne veut pas faire de répétition, par exemple ?


No


KaRiNe_Fr said:


> ... but if you're in bed and not sleeping all night long (eyes wide opened), could you say "I stayed up all night" or "I pulled an all-nighter"?


As explain later on (after I selected this post ) these 2 expression mean that you atre doing something else than trying to sleep, such as checking out posts on the WR site, reading, whatever. You wouldn't be in bed trying to catch a snooze.



marget said:


> We may also say "I was awake or up all night" without having left the bed.


yse to "awake all night", no to "up all night": the latter implies you were doing something else than being in bed.


rosieg said:


> What about "wakeful nights"? Ou "restless nights" qui est plus implicite?


"Restless nights" means you are tossing and turning in bed, worried about something but catching some (a little) sleep in between the bouts of being awake.

You could also say " a didn't sleep a wink", but the best translation by far is "sleepless nights" for "nuits blanches".


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## Kelly B

I agree with marget with respect to _I was up all night_ - to me, it means awake, whether or not I was in bed. Perhaps it is an AE/BE difference.


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## wildan1

if I couldn't sleep (but wanted to) I would say _I didn't sleep all night; I was up all night tossing and turning (in bed)_

if I didn't sleep because I had something else to do (party, write a paper, etc.) I would say _I stayed up all night_. _I pulled an all-nighter_ is often what students say when they stay up to study.

_Burning the midnight oil_ means working late into the night, but not necessarily that you don't finally go to bed before morning.

I do not think most English-speakers would make the immediate connection with this concept if they heard the words "white night"--it might be a poetic allusion some might guess at, but not a direct parallel with the French expression _nuit blanche_.


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## Mme Machin

"Elle a passé une nuit blanche" implies that she was unable to sleep at all last night, right?  Can "une nuit blanche" refer to deliberately staying up all night, like "pulling an all-nighter" to study or staying up all night to talk to friends?  In other words, does "une nuit blanche" always have a negative connotation because one would have preferred to sleep rather than be awake all night?


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## orlando09

marget said:


> ..."but if you're in bed and not sleeping all night long (eyes wide opened), could you say "I stayed up all night" or "I pulled an all-nighter"?"
> 
> We can say "I stayed up all night, it doesn't have to mean "debout". It can just mean "awake". We may also say "I was awake or up all night" without having left the bed. "I pulled an all-nighter", when a student says it, means that I did not sleep a wink because I was studying or doing homework.
> 
> I was just offering alternatives, but I didn't specify the context, and as we all know, everything depends on context. I hope nobody will lose any sleep over this!


 
I didn't sleep a wink (above) is another possibility; or just "I couldn't get to sleep" -- or I had a sleepless night.. I can't think of much else. definitely not "I had a white night" anyway


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## Mezzofanti

It looks pretty clear that there is a BE/AE divide on the sense of "up all night".  In England, "up" is literal, not metaphorical.  Once you are horizontal, you are no longer "up", irrespective of whether or not you are asleep. _Up_ is the opposite of _in bed_. The opposite of _asleep_ is not _up_, it is _awake_.


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## Mezzofanti

My wife, who is French, says that she would find it bizarre to say that someone had passed a "nuit blanche" if he had been voluntarily doing something incompatible with sleep, such as dancing in a night-club.  On the other hand she would see no objection to using the expression of a mother who has been unable to sleep because of looking after a baby a few feet from her bed. Basically you must be either in bed or else doing your best to be in it before you can complain of having a "nuit blanche".


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## timpeac

So perhaps the best way to say it is often "_kept_ up all night" rather than "up all night" when something undesirable is involved?


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## orlando09

Mezzofanti said:


> My wife, who is French, says that she would find it bizarre to say that someone had passed a "nuit blanche" if he had been voluntarily doing something incompatible with sleep, such as dancing in a night-club. ".


 
That's how I would usually see it, but then, in France they do sometimes seem to use it as a name for events taking place late at night - which you deliberately go to! But I guess this is a fairly uncommon usage . There is a Paris modern art event called the Nuits Blanches and also an event where you can see films free - maybe also one relating to free museum visits


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## KaRiNe_Fr

When out at night, something like « Faire la bringue/la java/les fous toute la nuit », and when at home working...euh... « Réviser/travailler/bosser toute la nuit » ?


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## ran

Contrairement à ce que Mezzofanti laisse entendre dans son post, passer une nuit blanche n'est pas quelque chose de nécessairement négatif ou involontaire (les exemples de l'étudiant bossant toute la nuit la veille de son exam ou des fêtards faisant la java toute la nuit ont déjà été mentionnés plus haut).
Ce qui ne veut pas dire que l'expression est toujours utilisée dans un sens positif (cf les exemples cités plus haut de gens n'arrivant pas à fermer l'oeil de la nuit).

Je rajouterais aussi qu'à Bruxelles, on "se tape" une nuit blanche.


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## loupiac

Je reviens sur le post de Cavatine en 2006. Bien sûr le traduction de "nuit blanche" est bien "sleepless night" , mais pour bien comprendre il faut prendre l'ensemble du texte de Nougaro:"sur l'écran noir de mes nuits blanches où je me fait du cinéma" = "on the black screen of my sleepless nights on which I make my own film...". Cette traduction mot à mot est bien insuffisante pour retranscrire cette sublime trouvaille poétique. Il est amoureux à en perdre le sommeil, il n'ose pas déclarer son amour et il rêve toutes les nuits les yeux ouverts dans le noir de la nuit. Comme on dit en français "il se fait son cinéma". L'inversion qu'il crée, la nuit est normalement noire et l'écran de cinéma lumineux ("l'écran noir" désigne habituellement la fin du film) ,  montre bien son trouble. Mais c'est un "rêve éveillé et non un cauchemar". Malheureusement pour nos amis Britanniques je crains que la beauté de cette ligne poétique soit intraduisible.


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## munkitkat

I agree with marget with respect to I was up all night - to me, it means awake, whether or not I was in bed. Perhaps it is an AE/BE difference.


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## loupiac

All those translations are good. I just intended to mention that the translation of the complete poetic sentence "sur l'écran noir de mes nuits blanches où je me fait du cinéma" written by Nogaro seems to me impossible to be translated with the same poetic power. In the late 60th this song kept me awake for many nights, and still today when I listen it again. It's just "génial"


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