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French to English translations [PRO] Bus/Financial - Government / Politics / Bill 59 (Quebec)
French term or phrase:sourd dans le tapis
Bill 59 aims to modernize Quebec’s four-decades-old occupational health and safety laws but various unions consider that it guts current legislation by freeing employers of many of their responsibilities to ensure a safe workplace. My text is one such protest from a union.
"Le projet de loi 59 met des embûches à la reconnaissance des maladies professionnelles.
• Imaginez, il faudra être ***sourd dans le tapis*** pour être indemnisé!"
And later in the same text: "Qu'est-ce qui attend plusieurs victimes ? C’est l’aide sociale pis du ***tirage de yab’ par la queue***."
Not familiar with these two idiomatic expressions. TIA
I chose not to suggest the terms 'dead' or 'deaf', as I didn't understand disability benefits to be the definite issue. I understood it was about redundancy or compensation payments ('pour être indemnisé') on account of occupational illnesses or hazards (des maladies professionnelles). Nonetheless 'sourd' means 'deaf'. I didn't know the idiom 'sourd dans le tapis'. It might have a subjective connotation, so I suggested 'brushed under the carpet', though another expression could be be 'cast aside'.
I think you're both making very good points. We would need further context to judge if the speaker was referring specifically to hearing damage, or whether he/she was just making a general point about the extreme difficulty in obtaining compensation for work-related injuries. In the latter case, a hyperonym or Generalising Translation such as "at death's door" would probably be perfectly OK. But it would be essential to establish the context here; otherwise, without being sure of this, it's safer to stick to the more direct translation. Getting it wrong could have unforeseen consequences.
But using deafness to illustrate the extreme seems rather odd, at least in English where I think we would probably use a more extreme example. The Asker does have this freedom of choice given that this is reporting speech and not, say, a legal document. However, it would clear up the issue if she could give us the missing context here.
il faudra être sourd dans le tapis pour être indemnisé
refers to anything else than hearing problems, that it's more than just an illustration for how high the bar was set to claim professional disability using hearing as an example.
They could have used as example "you will need to lose both legs to get indemnity for loss of mobility" or "you won't get compensation for blindness unless you lose both eyes" or any other extreme example.
This union has probably lots of members working in very noisy factories, do they used hearing loss as an example.
Althea deserves credit for researching this Québecois expression and I don't want to downplay that in any way. However, we are left with a single, isolated sentence which I would translate as "you'd have to be stone deaf to get compensation/cover/coverage". That would make sense if the discussion is about, say, a range of hearing-related conditions, but does it make sense otherwise? If Wyley could please post some surrounding text and/or tell us exactly what is under discussion here, maybe we will know.
Agree totally with Ormiston! Without your proper insight into the vicissitudes of the Quebec dialect and your clear explanation, I would still be struggling to make any sense of this. Marco did allude to this meaning, but didn't include any explanation in the main part of his Answer
I'm totally mystified by your entry, most especially by "achieved by the power of gossip or the 'gift of the gab" What you mean by this, and how is it relevant to this Question?
Here's another one - item 17 "When I lived in Montréal, I would see signs for Cheetos that read “Fromage dans le tapis”.
Being skilled in French, but not French idioms, I translated it literally to “There’s cheese in the carpet” and was baffled for months until somebody explained it to me.
What it meant was “Cheese to the max” or something like it.
See, “dans the tapis” translated literally means “in the carpet”. But colloquially it means the equivalent “pedal to the metal”.
'Dans le tapis' is a Québec saying meaning full blast, at a maximum, etc.. Here are a few examples. From Speak Québec!: A Guide to Day-To-Day Quebec French, "mettre la musique dans le tapis - to play music at high volume" https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=obzpDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT111&lp... This one about teenagers - "À cet âge, on a « les hormones dans le tapis »" i.e. they have a huge amount of hormones at that age. https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/04/06/attention-a-vos... This article about stressed people in Québec - "C’est avec ces critères en tête qu’on s’est demandé qui serait la personne la plus stressée du Québec. Qui sont ceux et celles qui vivent leur quotidien avec l’adrénaline dans le tapis ?" https://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/3e8c639e-3049-4132-9d73-d5a...
An interpretation from a source text: "Clause 59 makes the recognition of occupational hazards be difficult. It was envisaged that one would need to be brushed under the carpet before being made redundant. What awaits victims of a system could be social assistance which is achieved by the power of gossip or the 'gift of the gab'."
2ème question - je propose 'tirer le diable par la queue', i.e , avoir des difficultés à subvenir à ses besoins
ph-b (X)
France
tirage de yab' par la queue
16:28 Aug 21, 2021
« yab' » ressemble à une déformation phonétique de « diable ». Cf. « Prononciation » ici : https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/diable. Si c'est le cas, cf. « Tirer le diable par la queue (fam.). Vivre dans la gêne, avec très peu de ressources. » (https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/diable).Struggling to make ends meet vient à l'esprit.
Automatic update in 00:
Answers
11 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
a dead duck
Explanation: that's the idea IMO
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 mins (2021-08-21 16:22:17 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
"mettre sur le tapis" means "lay things out straight", "bring something up" etc. but I think we need something different in this context
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 17 mins (2021-08-21 16:23:39 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
maybe "flat out on your back"
David Hollywood Local time: 07:14 Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 16
Grading comment
Thx to everyone. I provided as much context as was available.
peer agreement (net): +1