# La France s'offre le grand chelem



## perdudanslaforet

La France s'offre le grand chelem

The grand slam is when one team beats all the other teams once in a competition.

I don't understand the use of s'offre in this context, can someone help?


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## Yendred

It literally means _to offer to oneself_:
_s’offrir — Wiktionnaire_
And by extension (meaning 3) _to give to oneself _(here: _to give a victory to oneself_).

It's a common journalistic expression.


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## perdudanslaforet

Literally I can translate the sentence but I can still not understand the meaning exactly. The grand slam is something that is won from competition. I'm not seeing how offer or give fits in this context.


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## perdudanslaforet

Yendred said:


> It literally means _to offer to oneself_:
> _s’offrir — Wiktionnaire_
> And by extension (meaning 3) _to give to oneself _(here: _to give a victory to oneself_).
> 
> It's a common journalistic expression.


Would something like "france get themselves the grand slam" be a good translation within the context?


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## joelooc

also "treat oneself to"


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## Son of a preacher man

Is this said before or after the match?
If before, then maybe _France is on the threshold of the grand slam._
If after, then_ France achieves the grand slam._

I can't see an English newspaper headline saying _England treats itself to the grand slam. _I imagine it would be more like _England grabs the grand slam prize. _The French term is a little less forceful.


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## Glasguensis

This is after the match. There is no direct translation here - we simply don’t say anything similar in English, whereas it’s fairly common in French. France are rewarded with is the closest I can think of.


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## Nicklondon

Perdudanslaforet - try not to expect too close a translation/equivalent to the original (lexically and grammatically). Check what the media use/what people actually say. What natives would expect to hear/say. Otherwise you end up with word for word translation which, though possible sometimes, does not always render a natural translation.
Victory for French Rugby/in Rugby Grand Slam/Rugby Reward (for alliterative effect) for France and variations of this and all the suggestions above work just fine.


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## Yendred

Don't you say things like "_I offered myself a good meal_"?


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## Glasguensis

Yendred said:


> Don't you say things like "_I offered myself a good meal_"?


That’s different. With the possible exception of Italy, all of the teams would have happily chosen « Grand Slam » from the menu, but it was not something they could simply choose to gain.


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## Yendred

Glasguensis said:


> it was not something they could simply choose to gain.


The expression does not mean they _chose _to win. But rather that they did what was necessary to win (e.g. training, team spirit, strategy, and so on), in order to offer themselves the victory.

When you offer a gift to someone, on one hand you indeed "choose" to offer it, but on the other hand, you do what's necessary for it: you think about it, you go to a shop and pay for it, you wrap it in wrapping paper, etc.


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## Glasguensis

At the risk of repeating myself, English speakers draw a distinction between things which are entirely elective and things which aren’t. I am completely comfortable with how s’offrir is used in French: we simply do not consider that a prize (for example) is something which we can offer to ourselves. A gold coin, yes, a gold medal, no.


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## OLN

_L'équipe nationale a offert la victoire à la France.
Le pays entier, par la victoire de son équipe nationale, s'offre..._
J'y vois aussi une idée de cadeau / de plaisir (inespéré, dans ce cas ?).


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## jekoh

_S'offre le grand chelem_ does not really mean more than _win the grand slam_.

Similarly, _la France s'offre l'Angleterre = France beat England._




OLN said:


> _L'équipe nationale a offert la victoire à la France._


Ça ne se dit pas tellement, on dit plutôt qu'un joueur a offert la victoire à son équipe (à la France = à l'équipe de France).


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## Le Gallois bilingue

You might try _“France hands itself the grand slam”, _although _glasguensis’s(7#) use of ‘rewarded’ hits the spot for me._


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## rrose17

Yendred said:


> Don't you say things like "_I offered myself a good meal_"?


Just to add to this interesting discussion, I can’t imagine saying this. What I would say is “I _treated_ myself to a good meal.”
I think, also, the verb offrir in French is used very differently than to offer in English.   « Je t’offre quelque chose » would never be “I offer you something” but more like “let me buy you something”.


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## Bezoard

L'idée qu'il y a derrière "s'offrir qqch" est qu'on obtient, par ses seuls efforts, quelque chose de prestigieux et/ou difficile à obtenir. Un équivalent dans ce sens est "décrocher" :
Le XV de France a* décroché* le dixième Grand Chelem de son histoire en dominant l'Angleterre 25 à 13 samedi,...

Voir aussi de nombreux exemples avec "s'offrir la Palme d'Or".


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## wildan1

Yendred said:


> Don't you say things like "_I offered myself a good meal_"?


No, not really.

Remember that FR _offrir _does not translate to _offer _with a gift or prize. It is usually translated as _give _or _treat to_

In your context above we say _I treated myself to a good meal._

As for the headline cited, perhaps _France wins the jackpot _would be the closest idea to the idiomatic wording in French.


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## Pedro y La Torre

joelooc said:


> also "treat oneself to"


You don't treat yourself to victory in a rugby tournament (or any contact sport for that matter). You can't "hand it to yourself" either. Has no-one here played rugby before? It's a long, hard (at times brutal) slog. Luckily, we have four English-speaking countries that play in the Six Nations (Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales) so the rugby union "Grand Slam" is familiar to us. You can't translate the sentence literally so you have to find another way of conveying a similar idea. I'd say:

"_France make it a clean sweep and win the Grand Slam_".


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## wildan1

_Grand slam_ in AE refers to baseball (a home run with all three bases loaded=4 points), so I don't think such a translation would be clear to North American audiences. Hence my suggestion of _wins _or _hits the jackpot.

Clean sweep _is OK over here, too, but we put such collective references to a whole team or company in the singular (_France makes it a clean sweep and wins...)_


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## Pedro y La Torre

True but there is the tennis Grand Slam that many Americans would be familiar with (the idea is sort of similar). In any event, I don't think too many North Americans even know what the Six Nations is. 

Aside from the Grand Slam, there is the Triple Crown that Ireland "s'est offerte" on Saturday. This is only contested among the "Home Nations". Using either of these terms without specifying the context for one's audience can be confusing; the American football Triple Crown is awarded to the player who ranks first in the NFL in receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns.


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## perdudanslaforet

Glasguensis said:


> This is after the match. There is no direct translation here - we simply don’t say anything similar in English, whereas it’s fairly common in French. France are rewarded with is the closest I can think of.


Is this an expression that doesn't translate? Perhaps that is why I'm having difficulty understanding. Like if I said the the grand slam was the icing on the cake, that would literally make no sense at all but I know in English exactly what it means.


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## Pedro y La Torre

You can't translate s'offrir here directly. English just doesn't work the same way French does in that regard. Don't take my word for it, look up the news headlines the last time Ireland, England or Wales won the Grand Slam (Scotland hasn't won one since 1990, sorry Scottish friends), you'll find many different takes but none will resemble "offered themselves", "treated themselves to", "handed to themselves" and so on.


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## Pedro y La Torre

By the way (it might be useful to someone doing translations in future), there is also a "Grand Slam tour" in which a touring national team from Australia, New Zealand or South Africa plays matches against all four home nations (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), almost always in the autumn. If the touring side wins all four of these games, they win the "Grand Slam". It's only applied to those three Southern Hemisphere sides because that's the tradition in rugby union.


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## Louis XI

perdudanslaforet said:


> La France s'offre le grand chelem
> 
> The grand slam is when one team beats all the other teams once in a competition.
> 
> I don't understand the use of s'offre in this context, can someone help?


Possible English verbs in this context:
. to win (!)
. to secure
. to claim
. to clinch
etc.


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## perdudanslaforet

Could you give me some more examples of s'offre in varying contexts? Is it more of an expression that doesn't translate directly even in French?


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## wildan1

Welcome to the WR Forum, perdudanslaforet,

Each of our FR-EN Vocabulary Forum's threads deals with a specific word or expression in a specific context.

For a more general idea of a word's usage in different contexts, have a look at our dictionary, which will provide you with that:

s'offrir - traduction - Dictionnaire Français-Anglais WordReference.com

wildan1, Moderator


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## merquiades

France earned itself a Grand Slam victory / a victory in the Grand Slam.

I bought myself a good meal.

I'd give up on offering or other synonyms.  We don't offer/ give ourselves things, we earn them, buy them, get them.


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## perdudanslaforet

I think the issue is that I'm not getting a straight answer on if it is an expression like "icing on the cake" or whatever, that doesn't necessarily make any sense unless known as an expression?


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## Pedro y La Torre

I don't understand the question. S'offrir quelque chose in French has a range of different meanings. It cannot be translated directly into English in this particular instance. I don't know how else to get the message across.


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## perdudanslaforet

Pedro y La Torre said:


> I don't understand the question. S'offrir quelque chose in French has a range of different meanings. It cannot be translated directly into English in this particular instance. I don't know how else to get the message across.


Is it an expression in French that would be used usually in different contexts but in this context  it makes sense, but usually wouldn't literally make sense given the context e.g in english if I said someone has a cold shoulder it has a literal meaning and a meaning as an expression?


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## Pedro y La Torre

It literally makes sense in French. It can be used in a range of contexts (e.g. buying oneself a present or winning a rugby tournament). The French team, to the French way of thinking, "gave themselves" a victory. But what makes sense in language 1 doesn't automatically do the same in language 2.


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## Glasguensis

It is not an expression, it is simply a word which doesn’t have a direct equivalent - there are lots, in both directions. For example there isn’t really a direct equivalent in French of the word “fun”. We can generally translate it by paraphrasing, which is exactly the case here - several possibilities have been suggested, but none of them are direct translations.


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## perdudanslaforet

Glasguensis said:


> It is not an expression, it is simply a word which doesn’t have a direct equivalent - there are lots, in both directions. For example there isn’t really a direct equivalent in French of the word “fun”. We can generally translate it by paraphrasing, which is exactly the case here - several possibilities have been suggested, but none of them are direct translations.


OK think I've got it now, thanks for all the great replies!


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## Yendred

Glasguensis said:


> “fun”


What?


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## perdudanslaforet

Yendred said:


> What?


Often involves humour, extremely difficult to explain the two concepts in France


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