# FR: Once the French start doing without accents, what can foreigners do?



## mbrower

Bonjour,

J'ai écrit la phrase suivante (il s'agit des accents dans l’écriture):

« Une fois que les français n’en ont plus besoin, quoi faire les étrangers ? »

(C’était plutôt une remarque ironique, ou bien c'était mon intention.)

Je voudrais savoir si j’ai fait une erreur en rajoutant « les étrangers » comme sujet de « quoi faire ».

Merci !


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## floise

Hi mbrower,

What is your original English sentence?

Floise


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## omahieu

I would tentatively suggest "que faire des étrangers ?", which means "what to do with the foreigners ?"


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## mbrower

J’ai commencé en français (ne sachant pas que ce forum est uniquement pour la traduction anglais-français, désolé), mais si je disais la même chose en anglais, ce serait peut-être, « Once the French start doing without accents, what can foreigners do (i.e., why should foreigners bother with accents themselves) ? » 


I was aiming for a colloquial tone, of course. Apparently, judging from the response so far, I missed, grammatically speaking.


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## Montaigne

mbrower,

The french do use accents, so foreigners have to comply.


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## Sunonis

Ta phrase est fausse; tu dois dire : "que peuvent faire les étrangers ?" ou "qu'est-ce que les étrangers peuvent faire?" (more colloquial)


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## itka

"Les Français commencent sans les accents...(not sure at all of my translation) Where have you seen such a thing ? 
_Pourquoi les étrangers devraient-ils se compliquer la vie avec_ ?"

...but... The French always use the accents. To forget an accent is definitely an error in french spelling... so, as Montaigne said, foreigners cannot drop them.


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## mbrower

Merci tout le monde pour vos réponses, surtout Sunonis, qui a bien corrigé la phrase en question.

As for some of the other responses, thank you, also, though I think the ironic tone of my question must have been missed in translation. I am indeed aware that accents are necessary in French…which is why I was teasing a French friend for not have using them in his e-mail.


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## GamblingCamel

_Mbrower_, Perhaps because I am also an EN speaker, I understood exactly what you meant. The humor struck me immediately.

In the States, we grow up, never using accents. Then we study the French language at school and put a lot of effort into using accent marks correctly. And to figuring out how to use alt keys and accent mark software.

Then we discover the Internet and exchange emails with French speakers. Lo and behold, these guys seem to use accent marks only when they're in the mood. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. 

Que faire, nous les etrangers ? (_said with a puzzled, world-weary_
_shrug of the shoulders)._ Pourquoi se compliquer la vie avec ?"

It's as if I were to obey all my life each of the 10 Commandments, and then finally reach "the Pearly gates" to hear St. Peter tell me that the rules have changed.


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## mbrower

Thank you, chameau-de-jeu (or perhaps chameau-qui-parie is a better translation).


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## nobbs

"_ChameauJoueur_", non?

"_À partir du moment où les Français lâchent l'affaire, pourquoi est-ce que les étrangers se compliqueraient la vie (avec les accents)?_"
Now that would be one colloquial sentence. 
Ou bien alors:
"_Si même les Français n'en voient pas l'utilité, pourquoi les étrangers devraient-ils se casser la tête (avec les accents)?_"


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## itka

> which is why I was teasing a French friend for not have using them in his e-mail.


I suppose your friend had a qwerty keyboard and didn't know how to put the accents... Otherwise, no french people would do it.

To us a [é] is not the same letter as a [e] and it's very difficult to write without accents (I had to do it, for some reasons, and I can tell it's very hard !)... That's why we didn't notice your humoristic intention.

Your first sentence 





> « Une fois que les français n’en ont plus besoin, quoi faire les étrangers ? »


 looked like you meant something completely different and not funny at all...


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## GamblingCamel

_Thank_ you, _Nobbs_, for bringing us back to the meat of the matter -- the EN to FR translation.

Translating a joke is difficult, especially if it is a bit dry, because often one wants to be subtle, merely suggestive. You don't want to hit your audience over the head with a hammer.

I like "lâchent l'affaire." To my AE ear at least, it sounds slangy and loose like "let things slide" or "let it all hang out" or even "get the monkey off one's back" (which of course, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, would be comparing accent mark usage to an addiction,_ which of course I know it's not _). 

"Se casser la tête" is great. I had forgotten about it.

I wrote "Pourquoi se compliquer la vie avec?"
because I thought the infinitive might deliver a snappier punch line
than does the conditional tense "se compliquerait." 

Yeah ... humor is a lot of work. Even more taxing than alt keys and accent mark software! 
And it rarely works in a group of people who speak different languages or come from different epistemological hoods.
And yet ... if it does work, it carries an expressive power that is "incontournable."


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## Maître Capello

_Si maintenant les Français se mettent à oublier les accents, que peuvent y faire les étrangers ?

__Si même les Français se mettent à oublier les accents, où allons-nous ?_


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## GamblingCamel

Man, it's too bad there is not an audio recording attached to each post.

_Maître Capello, _I look up at your avatar (which should be a smilie that we all can use) and wish that I could hear the vocal accent marks that you (or the guy in the photo) would insert into his FR to make the humor work.

_Sunonis_ had written, "Que peuvent faire les étrangers?"
The addition of the "y" -- is that for reasons of grammar, style, humor?
What is its function?


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## Maître Capello

GamblingCamel said:


> _Sunonis_ had written, "Que peuvent faire les étrangers?"
> The addition of the "y" -- is that for reasons of grammar, style, humor?
> What is its function?


I'd say it's for all three… 

_Que peuvent faire les étrangers ? → What can the foreigners do?_
_Que peuvent *y* faire les étrangers ?__ → What can the foreigners do *to change that*?

_We often say _Je ne peux rien *y* faire_ when we can't do anything about something. So the latter question with *y* has a slight comical effect (given the preceding sentence)…

P.S. — The guy in the photo is Albert Einstein…


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## GamblingCamel

So it is a "rhetorical" question, said for humorous effect, because the answer is obvious.

"Que peuvent y faire les étrangers ? 
"Rien du tout"
_that a foreigner, trying to change native habits [especially the French?!], will get nowhere_

I knew it was Albert Einstein. I purposely said "the guy in the photo" as understatement, given that "Albert Einstein" as a semantic device in AE even rivals Michael Jackson or the Pope.
It was a bit of an experiment. I'm still trying to see when indirectness or understatement or irony "translates" and when it does not in a forum like this. After all, few of us really know each other, we can't hear voices and see faces, and we work from different language bases. .... EEK! 

Anyway, the idea of using a German Jewish physicist born in 1879 (and who spoke FR as a second language) as my FR lingustic model in humor is itself comic.

_Maître, _That's a nice cybertext pun to insert a  following "The guy in the photo is Albert Einstein", given that this is in fact the action of the guy in the photo. Bravo!

Thank you, everyone, for helping out _Mbrower_ and me. I'm going to stop before I'm told I'm
going too far afield.


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## Punky Zoé

Hello

How about "si même les Français se mettent à oublier les accents, que restera-t-il aux étrangers ?".


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## GamblingCamel

Zoé, that's a lovely one.

Yeah ... that's _our_ job .... to misuse French.
What will remain for us foreigners to do?

Next the French will start pronouncing the final "s."
And even worse, will stop caring about a noun's gender.
We Americans will be left with absolutely nothing to contribute
to French culture. 
We'll have to just concentrate on screwing up our own language.


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## KaRiNe_Fr

I've read the whole thread,  and I would have said the same as Capello:


			
				Capello said:
			
		

> _Si même les Français se mettent à oublier les accents, où allons-nous ?_


Er... _nearly _the same in fact, as it's spoken language:
« Si même les Français se mettent à oublier les accents, _où va-t-on ? (je vous l'demande...)_ »


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## Nicomon

KaRiNe_Fr said:


> I've read the whole thread, and I would have said the same as Capello:
> Er... _nearly _the same in fact, as it's spoken language:
> « Si même les Français se mettent à oublier les accents, _où va-t-on ? (je vous l'demande...)_ »


 
And I would have said ... _où est-ce qu'on va?_  or (very colloquially)_ ousse qu'on s'en va? _



> We'll have to just concentrate on screwing up our own language.


  Some francophones are good at that game too.


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