# C'est de la langue de bois



## claupau

Hi everybody,

I have a situation, in an interview of my favorite soccer player there's a question that I don't get at all, could you help me with it please 

 this is the previous question and I understand everything

 En passant d'Auxerre à Rome, tu multiplies ton salaire par combien?

Je gagnais déjà très bien ma vie en France! Je ne suis pas venu ici pour l'argent. Sinon, je serais allé à Manchester. J'ai la chance d'être très bien payé pour pratiquer mom sport préféré. Mais je pourrais aussi jouer pour 1500 euros par mois.

 but then they ask him this other question and I don't get it 

 C'est de la langue de bois ça!

  Pas du tout. Le football est une passion pour moi. Le jour où le ballon ne me fait plus vibrer, j'arrête tout!

I understand his full reply but I'm not sure what the question is as i don't get what langue de bois means...thanks in advance for your help 

Have a nice day!
Claupau


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## la reine victoria

Hi Claupau,

WR dictionary gives the meaning as "stonewalling".

_stalling or delaying especially by refusing to answer questions or cooperate. _

LRV


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## claupau

thanks for your help I figured it out


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Couldn't "wooden tongue" (*) be understood?

This previous thread could help too.

(*) oops! This is a disease, sorry...


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## Tresley

claupau said:


> C'est de la langue de bois ça!


 
How about:

"That's just waffle!"

i.e. Saying things without answering the question, as politicians often do.

I hope this helps.


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## wildan1

since this is an athlete and not a politician being interviewed, I think i would go for something more general and colloquial:

"Give me a break--you don't really believe that, do you?"


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## pieanne

Tresley said:


> How about:
> 
> "That's just waffle!"
> 
> i.e. Saying things without answering the question, as politicians often do.
> 
> I hope this helps.


 
Oh, I really like this one! 
​


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## monxmood

beating about the bush, mincing words


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## gubbles85

i was thinking, couldn't be kind of like 'lip service'?


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## monxmood

gubbles85 said:


> i was thinking, couldn't be kind of like 'lip service'?



Langue de bois means talking while avoiding saying anything. Fudging an issue. Lip service is insincere agreement or acknowledgment of anything, especially to be politically correct.


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## Ami6

*"Langue de bois"* basically means *"bullshit"*, but more specifically *bullshit clothed or disguised in administrative terminology or "officialese" *if such a term exists.
Using *"langue de bois"* is basically a way*"to take you for a ride"*, i.e. *"vous mener en bateau"* we would say in French...
a way *to lead you astray*, or *deceive* you, but through *academic circonvolutions* ...
A *smooth talker* - *"beau-parleur" -* would be quite gifted in using the *"wooden tongue"*...

So I would go for something like *"official bullshit"*.


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## aztlaniano

You weaseled out of answering the question!


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## franc 91

A journalist would say - you haven't answered my question


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## aztlaniano

Ami6 said:


> the soccer player's not answering the question and trying to appear angelical... like he doesn't do it for the money and would still do it for peanuts, sure


You could say he has "evaded the question with a lot of _platitudes_".


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## wildan1

_Bullshit_ is much too strong for an interview published in a newspaper. The old-fashioned but quite acceptable (and funny) euphemism for this is _horsefeathers!_

More modern and quite acceptable for informal writing would simply be_ That sounds like a lot of bull._


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## edwingill

"political cant"


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## Newrone

Just my perspective: 

* I've never heard of "horsefeathers"!
* "Stonewalling" strikes me as particularly American
* Isn't "waffle" particularly British?
* Yes, you'd want to be careful of the context when using "bullshit". And the insinuation (it can also be taken to mean "you're lying")!
* I've just used "double talk" (in the sense of giving ambiguous answers).


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## Carcassonnaise

And I would say "disingenuousness"


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## aztlaniano

Aussi: To be mealy-mouthed


Newrone said:


> * Isn't "waffle" particularly British?


I think it's also used in the US, especially with politicians who seem to keep switching sides on an issue, or trying to be on both sides at once.


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## franc 91

Pour moi, to waffle (on) veut dire baratiner, causer pour rien dire, la diarrhée verbale - quand on pratique la langue de bois, souvent on parle le moins possible pour ne pas dévoiler ce que l'on veut garder secret.


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## celtique

What if they said to the soccer player, "Don't sugar coat it!" That may be too outdated an expression, although I see it used occasionally.


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## Wodwo

monxmood said:


> Langue de bois means talking while avoiding saying anything. Fudging an issue. Lip service is insincere agreement or acknowledgment of anything, especially to be politically correct.



I don't think 'paying lipservice' applies particularly to being politically correct. It's a term that long predates the idea of 'political correctness' and gets used in all kinds of contexts where people conceal their real beliefs.

Similarly, 'stonewalling' doesn't sound particularly American to me - it's certainly in current use in the UK. It has a kind of rigidity about it that sounds good for 'la langue de bois', but it doesn't get over the empty flannel aspect manifested very clearly by the football player at the top of this thread. I'd go for 'pious waffle', but that doesn't convey the mass-produced, lifeless nature of the ideas expressed and the language used. 

'Cant' would be perfect I think, except that in my experience no one ever actually says it. It's a word I've only encountered frequently in novels of the late 19th century.

We have plenty of this kind of language in English - surely we also have a term for it...?


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## Carcassonnaise

Have to disagree about "cant", Wodwo   I have often heard people saying it...


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## Wodwo

Well we must move in very different circles. I'd put it in the category of words you can't rely on others understanding.


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## Carcassonnaise

Well, okay, maybe not "often" (or did I dream it? )  I wouldn't myself have thought it was such an esoteric word but then... one man's meat, etc.


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## aztlaniano

celtique said:


> What if they said to the soccer player, "Don't sugar coat it!" That may be too outdated an expression, although I see it used occasionally.


The soccer player is evading/dodging the question, not sugar-coating the response.
An example of sugar-coating: Company X announces that its employees will receive five extra vacation days beginning in 2012. That sugar-coats the rest of the news: their salaries will be cut by 5 % in 2012.


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## lorenzogranada

langue de bois is commonly used in French, but in English it's harder to pin down.  generally means sentences full of empty pseudo-intellectual words such as economic, social, development, implementation, analysis, that you usually here in boring speeches by politicans and company managers.  in English one sometimes hears "bureaucratese", but a translation usually has to resort to "bureaucratic rhetoric", "bureaucratic bla-bla-bla" - "bureaucratic bullshit" even.  "meaningless jargon" and "high-flown jargon" might also do.  the French say it whenever they feel someone is avoiding the issue and bombarding them with big words - which happens quite often!


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## WRG

That's gobbledygook.


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## rooster1106

I think langue de bois is like spin. It's any kind of disingenuous speech. I like "waffle"! No American would ever say that! You could say that the person is waffling around, but even that is somewhat obscure for us. I like bullshit as a translation.


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## Wodwo

monxmood said:


> Langue de bois means talking while avoiding saying anything.



It's just occurred to me that we often call this kind of thing "hot air" or "flannel". Both are a speciality of politicians, council officials, etc.


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## Gerard Samuel

I think "double-talk" is a good translation. You could also say "obfuscation" or even "spin" in the United States.


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## lorenzogranada

Langue de bois, as I understand it, refers to a style and vocabulary, not the content or purpose of what's being said. It usually IS, as you say, waffle and bullshit and bla bla bla, but you can also do those things without resorting to the "officialese", administrative language meant by "langue de bois". If instead of saying "We want to get the job started as soon as we decide on the best possible way to do it", you pompously proclaim that "We foresee implementing the project subsquent to finalizing the organizational specifications in the framework of the most innovative structural methodology feasible", then that's "langue de bois"!  Lots of official, government types use it to make themselves sound more important than they are. It's not as commonly used in Engish as in Latin languages such as Spanish, where we translators joke about a speech as being "macarónico" - like a never-ending strand of spaghetti - and also in Portuguese where it's simply become a standard way of saying anything in public (unfortunately), so much that they don't even have a name for it.


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## franc 91

Personally I think la langue de bois does have this specific meaning of hiding behind meaningless talk in order to mask what the person really thinks or to mask the fact that they don't have any adequate policies or opinions to address the question about which they're are being asked.  I have seen it translated as waffle and as cant, but I suggest to obfuscate and obfuscation, as well as avoiding the question or stonewalling. For a complete definition of la langue de bois I suggest this -
www.toupie.org/Dictionnaire/Langue_de_bois.htm


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## lorenzogranada

The web page you indicate seems to say more or less what I am saying, plus what you are saying also, so perhaps we are both right. It defines langue de bois as the...

utilisation abusive de : 

stéréotypes exprimés de manière pompeuse (banalité, cliché. Ex : les temps sont durs)
pléonasmes (expressions superflues, redondantes. Ex : projet d'avenir),
barbarismes (mots inventés ou détournés de leur sens. Ex : solutionner, finaliser),
euphémismes (atténuation d'une réalité brutale ou d'une idée désagréable. Exemple : un non-voyant pour un aveugle),
mots peu usités et prétentieux (Ex : systémique, paradigme)


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## lorenzogranada

Working as a translator in France (for Unesco, 30 years ago) we often had occasion to complain about delegates and officials who churned out reams of "big" words that, when boiled down into plain English, amounted to practically nothing, and we called it "langue de bois". For example (and I make this up "off the cuff") "Organizational decision-making must be implemented in a framework of total transparency with a clear focus on long-term cost-effectiveness that is in line with the established criteria for group undertakings of similar scope and repercussions." This mechanically pretentious sort of vocabulary, rather than its purpose alone (as expressed by bullshit, stonewalling and waffling) is artificial, abstract and in most cases meaningless, aimed only at filling up pages (which, I admit, is great for translators) and, also, at intimidating any other organization member who might possibly criticize its content or lack thereof.  I would therefore call "langue de bois", as some members have already suggested, "officialese" or "doublespeak", but to get the full impact across I might prefer "administrative gobbledy-gook", "pseudo-technical jargon" or "over-blown adminstratese".


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## franc 91

There's an article in this week's Private Eye which gives a couple of examples of how this is expressed in BE journalism -
"Pressed on how well she performed her role of challenging the bank, Fairhead waffled......" 
"the incoming chairwoman spluttered and failed to answer...."
(I have also had the experience of having to translate what a French politician was saying before a chosen public - and having to interrupt him with the translation, much to his annoyance - and quickly realising that what he was saying was pretty shallow - to put it politely)


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## Nicomon

I think that lorenzogranada gave a perfect example of  "day to day speak"  versus "langue de bois" 





> If instead of saying "We want to get the job started as soon as we decide on the best possible way to do it", you pompously proclaim that "We foresee implementing the project subsquent to finalizing the organizational specifications in the framework of the most innovative structural methodology feasible", then that's "langue de bois"!


 I also like the one that he added earlier today and agree 100% about "mechanically pretentious sort of vocabulary". 

 I also understand « langue de bois » just as they wrote in the web page that franc91 linked to, part of which is copied in post 34.  

I call that "*corporate jargonese*", and was able to find an article that I remembered reading several years ago : * Do you speak jargonese?
*
In the initial context of this thread, namely: 

Question : En passant d'Auxerre à Rome, tu multiplies ton salaire par combien?
Answer : Je gagnais déjà très bien ma vie en France! Je ne suis pas venu ici pour l'argent. Sinon, je serais allé à Manchester. J'ai la chance d'être très bien payé pour pratiquer mom sport préféré. Mais je pourrais aussi jouer pour 1500 euros par mois.
Comment : *C'est de la langue de bois ça!
**
* I'm not sure that « langue de bois » has been used appropriately.  
As a Quebecker, I would have said :   _Ça monsieur, c'est du patinage.  Vous ne répondez pas à ma question. _


> QUÉBEC – Fait d’éluder une question embarrassante. Le patinage d’un politicien sur un sujet controversé.


 _Patinage_ in this context is more or less :  _Tourner autour du pot / Beating about the bush _(see post 8)

I agree with aztlaniano and franc91 who respictively wrote:
_- You weaseled out of answering the question 
__- A journalist would say - you haven't answered my question _


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## wildan1

Carcassonnaise said:


> And I would say "disingenuousness"


_Disingenuousness_ means saying something that is supposed to mean one thing but really means another. That's also called _using weasel words._


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