# sans pour autant



## enJoanet

Hi !!

Could anyone tell me how "sans pour autant" could be translated in english??

Here is an example in which _"sans pour autant" _is used:

_Il a réduit son rythme de travail sans pour autant abandonner ses compagnons._


Thanks in advance!

Joan

*Moderator note:* Multiple threads merged to create this one.


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## wildan1

_without...at the same time_

_He cut back on his workload without leaving his partners aside at the same time._


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## Moon Palace

You could also have said 
'without leaving his partners aside for all that'.


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## FrenchMajor

Salut,

J'ai du mal a traduire "sans pour autant"..
Est-il dans la lignee de "not even"?

Merci de vos reponses.

Du contexte:
L'Eglise est très présente dans l'espace public italien. La disparition de la Démocratie chrétienne l'amène à exprimer ses positions *sans pour autant* donner de consignes de vote.


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## timpeac

Having read through the various examples, I think in English we'd say "necessarily". Without necessarily....


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## jann

_*sans pour autant* donner de consignes de vote_


timpeac said:


> Having read through the various examples, I think in English we'd say "necessarily". Without necessarily....


Or "without _actually_..."


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## wildan1

(note the required verb tense for this phrase, using the gerund)



jann said:


> _*sans pour autant* donner de consignes de vote_
> 
> Or "without _actually_..."


 
_*...having given* any voting recommendations _


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## jann

wildan1 said:


> (note the required verb tense for this phrase, using the gerund)
> _*...having given* any voting recommendations _


Hmm, that's not how I understood the sentence. 

_ La disparition de la Démocratie chrétienne l'amène à exprimer ses positions sans pour autant donner de consignes de vote._

As I read it, this means that since the end of the CD era in 1994, the Church no longer makes official endorsements on votable issues. -->  "(But) the end of Christian Democracy (has) lead the Church to express its positions without actually making voting recommendations." 

Even if you consider the passage to be written in the historical present, I still can't quite figure how you would translate _sans pour autant_ with a past continuous...


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## timpeac

My reading of it is the same as jann's.


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## wildan1

jann said:


> Hmm, that's not how I understood the sentence.
> 
> _La disparition de la Démocratie chrétienne l'amène à exprimer ses positions sans pour autant donner de consignes de vote._
> 
> As I read it, this means that since the end of the CD era in 1994, the Church no longer makes official endorsements on votable issues. --> "(But) the end of Christian Democracy (has) lead the Church to express its positions without actually making voting recommendations."
> 
> Even if you consider the passage to be written in the historical present, I still can't quite figure how you would translate _sans pour autant_ with a past continuous...


 
Maybe I didn't pay enough attention to the full context, jann. My point was about the gerund, not the past/present tense part of it.


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## birder

"...répondra avec diligence SANS POUR AUTANT être tenue à un quelconque dèlai..."


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## bh7

...will respond with all due diligence, without however being obliged to respect any particular deadline...


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## marc75

C’est vrai qu’il faut savoir tenir ses positions, sans pour autant oublier que savoir écouter est un art. […]
=> […] without .... forget that knowing listen to is an art […]
Thanks


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## sound shift

Je propose: "It is true that we need to know how to stand our ground, *but at the same time* we must not neglect the art of listening […]".


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## khazan

La révolution islamique a remis en cause ce mode de pensée, qui opposait l’Iran au reste du monde, en cherchant à l’intégrer le pays au monde islamique, à l’ummâ, sans pour autant abandonner le discours nationaliste traditionnel


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## Mel1234

sans pour autant: "but without"


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## quinoa

Or just "without"


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## jmt_dh1

Can I revive this, as I have another example of this phrase that I am still unsure about having read this thread. My phrase is:



> [C'est] un cas idéalisé dont on ne peut que se rapprocher expérimentalement ou numériquement, sans pour autant la modéliser parfaitement



Would I be correct in understanding this as:



> [This is] an ideal case which cannot be achieved experimentally or numerically - it cannot even be modelled perfectly



Am I understanding the *sans pour autant* part correctly?

Thanks in advance
Jonny


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## enJoanet

hey!
I'm not sure I quite understand your example. The original seems a bit self-contradictory to me...

For the sake of the discussion, let's imagine that the original says:
_C'est un cas idéalisé dont on peut se rapprocher expérimentalement ou numériquement, sans pour autant la modéliser parfaitement_

in this case, the translation would be:
"This is an ideal case which can be achieved experimentally or numerically, without being perfectly modelled nonetheless..."

does this make sense to you?


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## jmt_dh1

Oh dear, you're right - I misread the original French that I copied into my message (missed the *que*)! It makes more sense to me now. I think the translation should read:



> [This is] an ideal case which can only be approximated experimentally or numerically - it cannot even be modelled perfectly


Does that sound right?


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## enJoanet

I think your translation is essentially right but it fails to render the "sans pour autant"...

 "it cannot even be modelled perfectly" would be "il ne peut même pas être modélisé parfaitement"..

La relation entre "mais ne peut même pas" et "sans pour autant" est différente....C'est une question de nuance, certes, mais c'est-là tout l'intérêt de la discussion...

Il me semble que, dans l'exemple que tu as proposé, la relation entre les deux termes de la phrase est de type "It is true that X. That said,...."


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## timpeac

I'd suggest - "which doesn't mean/suggest that it can be modelled perfectly".


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## enJoanet

it could work 
or which doesn't imply...


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## jmt_dh1

Merci tous les deux, mais comme enJoanet a dit, c'est toujours un peu contradictoire, non?

e.g. "[This is] an ideal case which can only be approximated experimentally or numerically - which doesn't mean it can be modelled perfectly"

OK, not contradictory exactly, but it seems to be basically saying the same thing twice, in rather a strange manner. That was why I thought I'd try the "it cannot even...". Maybe it is just that the original is rather oddly phrased...


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## timpeac

I think you're right - the original is a bit tautological. If you can only "se rapprocher" to it then by definition you can't model it perfectly.


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## Unicornjumper

Bonjour à tous!

I've read the examples above but I'm still not sure what it means exactly in my sentence.

Mathieu Kassovitz parle le même langage que Rozier- sauf que lui a
filmé la banlieue sans pour autant vouloir faire un film sur la banlieue.

So is it that Kassovitz filmed the banlieue as well as making a film about it even though he didn't want to?
Or is the author saying that the film is the filming of the banlieue and Kassovitz didn't want to make a film about it so therefore didn't?

Merci d'avance


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## jmt_dh1

I'd interpret that as saying he filmed _in_ the banlieue but didn't intent to make a film _about_ the banlieue (he didn't see that as the main objective of the film). I could be wrong though...


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## NancyDunn

Many thanks to the moderator for attempting to bring order to the many threads on the subject of translating _*sans pour autant que*_ to English. Nevertheless, the amalgamated thread still doesn't seem to answer the question. I'd like to give it a try, starting with a little cultural context and a new example.

*Background*
The French locution _*sans pour autant que *_seems especially difficult to translate to English. I suspect that's because of a fundamental cultural difference in the rhetorical customs of native French and English speakers. In French, speakers and writers frequently articulate their ideas in negative constructions ("it is not without difficulty," and so on). In English, translations of that sort of syntax seem convoluted, awkward, antiquated, or stuffy--if not outright incorrect. When I encounter unfamiliar phrases like these while reading French, I feel as if I not only have to convert the words to English but also perform a mathematical operation in order to comprehend the meaning. So _*sans pour autant que *_presents a particular translation challenge. 

*Example*
Here's a new example to consider, taken from a general-interest news Web site called L'Internaute. It's an excerpt from an article about a consumer group expressing outrage about the high cost of glasses (spectacles) in France:

"Selon l'association de consommateurs, près de 13 millions de paires de lunettes sont vendues chaque année en France, sans pour autant que les prix baissent, bien au contraire."


*My attempts to translate the example

*Literal translation (which doesn't quite make sense in English): 
_According to the organization of consumers, nearly 13 million pairs of glasses are sold each year in France, without for all that the prices lower, very much the contrary._

More fluently translated into American English, in a similar journalistic style:
_According to the consumer organization, nearly 13 million pairs of glasses are sold each year in France; despite all those sales, the prices don't come down--quite the contrary._

Still, if I were working as an editor for the American version of the web site, I'd go farther and recast all parts of the translation in the positive:

_According to the consumer group, despite the nearly 13 million pairs of glasses sold each year in France, the prices are going up instead of down._


*Suggested translations for the idiomatic phrase sans pour autant que
*
So it looks as if one translation for _*sans pour autant que *_would be_* in spite of all that *_or_* despite*_. 

I'm not confident that I understand all the nuances of this phrase. I welcome feedback.

--Nancy


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## Moon Palace

> Selon  l'association de consommateurs, près de 13 millions de paires de  lunettes sont vendues chaque année en France, sans pour autant que les  prix baissent, bien au contraire



I think you get the meaning, NancyDunn. Yet we would need more context before choosing to reorganise the sentence: it is difficult to say whether the comment on the price is due to the organisation or to the author himself. I might suggest: _according to the consumer group, about 13 million pairs of glasses are sold each year in France; yet prices do not go down, much to the contrary actually. _
The point about _sans pour autant_ is that the comment is made afterwards, as an afterthought, giving it much more power than when you use _despite / in spite of. _


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## Madasa

Good morning/afternoon all
I have this phrase (Sans pour autant) to translate. I have read the existing forum threads but they do not seem to deal with the way in which this phrase appears at the beginning of a sentence, seemingly disjointed from the preceding sentence although it seems as though it ought to be joined to the preceding sentence.

Le demandeur d’asile cherche un lieu, un _τόπος_, où il se sentira protégé, un refuge en quelque sorte. Pour cela, il doit quitter un pays pour un autre et espère des jours meilleurs. Sans pour autant que l’on reconnaisse juridiquement son statut de « réfugié », selon la Convention de Genève de 1951 et le protocole de 1967. 

My attempt

[…] hope for better days without legally registering/ without having legally registered his status as “refugee” […].

Have I understood this phrase correctly in this context? Have I made a mistake to join the two sentences together in English?
Your opinions would be very valuable.
Many thanks


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## Katsebourg

Il y a, je pense, un contresens dans ta phrase : ce n'est pas que ce demandeur d'asile ne se soit pas enregistré en tant que réfugié. C'est que son statut de réfugié n'est pas reconnu officiellement. Il y a selon moi une différence importante.
Pour ce qui est de "sans pour autant", le simple "without" convient, éventuellement complété de "however".


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## af1102

Comment expliqueriez-vous cet usage de «sans pour autant que» en anglais?_

Sa masse lui donne une force de gravité qui permet à notre corps d'être attiré vers le sol et d'y rester, sans pour autant que cette force soit trop puissante et qu'elle nous écrase au sol!
_
Je n'arrive pas à comprendre ce que ça veut dire. L'autre post sur la phrase «_sans pour autant que_» suggère que la traduction serait «but that's not to say that...» ou «but that doesn't mean that», mais dans ce context ça n'a aucun sens. Merci!


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## Maître Capello

The meaning is: _*but at the same time* that force is not too powerful and doesn't pin us to the ground_.


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## Kelly B

Right, word-for-word (which is almost always awkward-sounding) it's close to _...without, nevertheless, that force being so strong that....
_I might rephrase to_
...but not to the extent/degree that..._


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