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modifications IPE
ouvrage d'appoint
May 13, 2012 23:28
12 yrs ago
2 viewers *
French term

c'est un des plaisirs vaut un plaisir

French to English Social Sciences General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters in an interview
This is from an interview with a woman who suffers from a chronic disease:

"C’est un des plaisirs vaut un plaisir à savoir essayer de trouver au quotidien des petites choses positives qui peuvent compenser des moments de douleur."

This isn't clicking for me, for some reason. Any ideas?
Proposed translations (English)
3 count your blessings
5 This is one of the pleasures to know...
4 +1 "one treat for one pain"
4 You take pleasure in...
4 it's a real pleasure to
3 That's / It's something of a pleasure
Change log

May 14, 2012 04:42: writeaway changed "Field (specific)" from "Journalism" to "General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters" , "Field (write-in)" from "(none)" to "in an interview"

May 14, 2012 16:24: Yolanda Broad changed "Term asked" from "c\'est un des plaisirs vaux un plaisir" to "c\'est un des plaisirs vaut un plaisir"

Discussion

Dareth Pray (asker) May 18, 2012:
I requested that the transcript be reviewed. There were issues throughout, although this was the only time it was so wrong as to be incomprehensible as it is currently written. If I get an answer on what she actually said, I'll post it in the discussion. I'm going to hold off on grading for a few days in case I get a corrected version, and we'll see who was right! Thanks everyone for your insight! I think we have several valid approaches going here.
Daryo May 16, 2012:
'woz just trying to be nice to humans... and nasty to machines... No, I’m not a Luddite, just annoyed when serious limitations of non-human devices are glossed over!
Wolf Draeger May 16, 2012:
On the right track Daryo, that actually works very well, clean and simple. It could then be seen as that person's motto in life, so to speak, to cope with her condition.

I don't think faulty software is necessarily involved, though; the error could be all too human (+ we don't know if the speaker ate her words, or had a heavy accent) :-)
Daryo May 16, 2012:
non-human speech-to-text conversion? Change the original to :
"C’est [un cas de] "un déplaisir vaut un plaisir", à savoir essayer de trouver au quotidien des petites choses positives qui peuvent compenser des moments de douleur."
Sounds the same BUT makes perfect sense.
Looks like the speech-to-text conversion was done by a non-human, i.e. by some speech recognition software that needs some serious polishing?
Like the ability to "hear" quotation marks, or make the difference between "un des plaisirs" and "un déplaisir"
Tony M May 15, 2012:
Well done Wolf! For taking that leap and thinking outside the box!

I feel sure that your suggested error scenario is very likely indeed; I have recently myself re-transcribed a series of videos that had been very poorly transcribed, and these were exactly the kinds of errors I encountered.
Dareth Pray (asker) May 14, 2012:
That would make a lot of sense. I could see how that error could happen. That would also explain the " à savoir" conflict we all have been having because "namely" sounds strange here and another infinitive sounds clumsy. So it would be, literally notated for illustrative purposes: when you [are in NOT pleasure] you need [a pleasure], THAT IS, trying to find the little positive things that compensate for the pain... This would work, and I can see how the sounds could be equivalent.
Wolf Draeger May 14, 2012:
I'm going out on a limb here; on the assumption that the transcription is incorrect, how does this sound:

"Si t'as un déplaisir, faut un plaisir, à savoir essayer de trouver...", where "si tu as un" and "déplaisir" are mis-transcribed as "c'est un" and "des plaisirs", respectively.

So, "if (or when) you're in pain, you need to think of something positive, you need to think of the positive little things in life...".

Too much poetic license :-) ?
Dareth Pray (asker) May 14, 2012:
Thanks everyone, for your input. I'm glad that I was not mistaken to think that there was something seriously wrong with this phrase. I think you've all given me several creative solutions to choose from. It is a transcription from an interview. I didn't do the transcription myself, and I don't have access to the audio, so it's hard to say for sure what happened here. Maybe she did stop and restart, or there is a transcription error. I think the idea that she is trying to communicate is clear enough to reconstruct, and there are several good options here.

I don't actually have more context to give you, Wolf. The speaker changes topics suddenly and without warning, so it can be a little hard to track her in any case. The text before and after isn't really connected.

Thanks again!
Wolf Draeger May 14, 2012:
Inaccurate transcription? More context! It certainly seems as though the transcription is not accurate at this point. Perhaps some ante and post context might help to better understand the speaker's meaning in the beginning of the sentence?
Michel F. Morin May 14, 2012:
Last one Tony, nous n'allons pas scotcher la discussion sur cet intéressant débat: ce sera donc là ma dernière intervention.
En dépit des arguments que vous apportez, mon appréciation ne rejoint pas la votre. Même s'il s'agit d'un propos informel, non préparé etc. (ce que d'ailleurs ne se retrouve pas dans le reste du propos), il est supposé apporter un minimum de compréhension: ce n'est pas le cas ici !
Tony M May 14, 2012:
But Michel... ...I didn't say it was "informal language", I said it was "informal speech" — i.e. someone speaking, naturally, off the cuff, without having prepared in advance what they are going to say. In this sort of situation, it is very common to find incomplete phrases, people who break off and change direction halfway through a phrase, etc. This is absolutely typical of transcribed speech, and sometimes it is necessary to 'clean it up' by leaving out the truncated (discarded) bits, 'er' and 'um' etc. But this does not give us the right to re-write completely what the speaker actually said.
Michel F. Morin May 14, 2012:
Tony Il ne s'agit pas de "langage informel": tout simplement, IMHO, ce membre de phrase ne fait aucun sens. Il serait d'ailleurs intéressant de recueillir à ce sujet d'autres avis...
Voilà pourquoi la proposition que j'exprime me paraît être la "moins pire".
Tony M May 14, 2012:
@ Michel I don't see why you say "we are far beyond 'informal speech'", but in any case, to modify the sentence in the way you suggest amounts IMHO to seriously changing the speaker's intention.
Michel F. Morin May 14, 2012:
Thanks... Well, we are far beyond "informal speech", and clearly this sentence (or part of it) makes no sense. We may use whichever "intelligence, experience ans linguistic skills" we master: there is not much wood to be seen through this tree !
IMHO the best would be to forget this specific part of the sentence, and to concentrate on the rest, slightly rebuilt: "essayer de trouver au quotidien des petites choses positives ET DES PLAISIRS qui peuvent compenser des moments de douleur."
Tony M May 14, 2012:
@ Michel Yes, Michel, but we have to accept that informal speech often breaks grammar rules, and it's up to us to use our intelligence, experience, and linguistic skills to try to see through the trees to the wood.
Michel F. Morin May 14, 2012:
Construction Bonjour,

Grammaticalement, la construction de cette phrase est clairement incorrecte. Tel quel, en fait, "C’est un des plaisirs vaut un plaisir" makes no sense - which does not help us suggesting any translation or even interpretation.
Tony M May 14, 2012:
Transcription? I suspect this is a transcription from an oral interview, in which case, this duplication may just reflect the way the person was speaking in an extempore fashion, probably ought to have been punctuated thus:

« C'est un des plaisirs... (ça) vaut un plaisir etc. »

I would imagine she might have corrected herself, as she had started badly: "That's one of the pleausres... of my painful condition"!!! I think if I had started like that, I would probably have corrected myself and started over...

Proposed translations

3 days 9 hrs
Selected

count your blessings

Not perfectly equivalent linguistically, but I think it conveys the sense of trying to "look on the bright side of life" reasonably well, and may fit in nicely with the notion of compensating for constant pain with little moments of happiness (pleasure isn't really the right word/concept here).

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 3 days12 hrs (2012-05-17 11:33:37 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Or: "a smile for every grimace", "smile through the pain", "smile through your tears"... :-)
Example sentence:

It's a matter of counting your blessings every day, by trying to find the little positive things in life...

You count your blessings every day...

Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thank you! "
1 hr
French term (edited): c'est un des plaisirs vaux un plaisir

This is one of the pleasures to know...

--
Peer comment(s):
neutral philgoddard : I think you'll find "à savoir" means "namely" rather than "to know".
3 hrs
Something went wrong...
4 hrs
French term (edited): c'est un des plaisirs vaux un plaisir

You take pleasure in...

Or "I take pleasure in".

I'm not sure why she repeats the bit about "plaisir", but this is clearly the kind of idea she's expressing. "You take a daily pleasure in trying to find little positive things that compensate for the pain".
Something went wrong...
5 hrs
French term (edited): c'est un des plaisirs vaux un plaisir

it's a real pleasure to

Never heard this expression and it seems to be a ' deformation' of more standard structures but this is a natural sounding translation
Something went wrong...
6 hrs
French term (edited): c'est un des plaisirs... (ça) vaux un plaisir

That's / It's something of a pleasure

...or: I take a certain pleasure

Whether you need that's or it's really depends how it follows on from what goes before, which will also of course influence how to handle the « à savoir » bit.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 6 hrs (2012-05-14 05:39:08 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

I'm undecided about the 'à savoir...' — on the face of it, having a stack of three infinitives likes this would be rather clumsy style: "knowing how to try and find...", leading one to the conclusion that the 'à savoir' would have the other meaning of 'namely' or 'viz.'

However, that said, 'namely' sits slightly awkwardly here (though depends on what precedes this), and given that this appears to be a transcription of an oral interview, I think it is probably quite legitimate that the lady, thinking 'on the hoof' as it were, might express herself in that way.

So my final vote goes for the "knowing how to try and find" reading.
Something went wrong...
+1
2 days 16 hrs
French term (edited): "un déplaisir vaut un plaisir"

"one treat for one pain"

keep the balance of painful and pleasurable experiences

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2 days16 hrs (2012-05-16 16:20:51 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

This is from an interview with a woman who suffers from a chronic disease:
"C’est un des plaisirs vaut un plaisir à savoir …
Change the original to :
"C’est [un cas de] "un déplaisir vaut un plaisir", à savoir essayer de trouver au quotidien des petites choses positives qui peuvent compenser des moments de douleur."
Sounds the same BUT makes perfect sense.
Looks like the speech-to-text conversion was done by a non-human, i.e. by some speech recognition software that needs some serious polishing?
Like the ability to "hear" quotation marks, or make the difference between "un des plaisirs" and "un déplaisir"
Peer comment(s):
agree Wolf Draeger : Not natural English; perhaps rather go for something along the lines of "it's about making the most of every/a bad situation"? But your interpretation of the French is spot on.
1 hr
Yes, it’s surely another possible variant. But I wanted to preserve this idea that you have to counterbalance each step back (a bit of pain) by a step forward - some little pleasure.
Something went wrong...
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