Would someone be so kind as to translate a very short passage of a French movie for me?

I'm talking about this clip (heavy spoilers for Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEoYgXG8r-8

Just the couple of lines from 2:00 on onwards.

I'm asking because I have seen this movie a few times (once in German, two times in French with subtitles), and each time the translation of these final lines has been different. Only slightly so, but enough to completely change the meaning.

Hi, long time since my last post .... but for a french question I can crawl out of my grotto ....


So I suppose you' reffering to the lines around 2:35 ..... the keyword is "dégueulasse"

You rightly guessed it's a tricky word.
The literral translation is "filthy" if used as an adjective. But it can have other meanings (it's a very "familiar" word if you see what I mean).

For instance :
Belmondo (the man) says "Tu es vraiment dégueulasse .... "
Which could mean (literraly) "You're really filthy" / "You're really dirty" but I think you have to understand it to the figurative way : like "You're a real bastard" / "You have no honnor".

Now the girl asks the other man (the alive one) : "Qu'est ce qu'il a dit ?" or "What did he say ?" and the guy says "Il a dit que vous étiez une dégueulasse .."

The meaning is slightly different ("dégueulasse" is used here as a noun), in worse. You can understand "He said that you're a slut". The guy (voluntarily ?) made a mistake and didn't repeat exactly the same thing and the meaning is way more vulgar ( Same difference as "you're filthy" and "you're a filth").

But in the end the girl asks " What is the meaning of 'dégueulasse' ?"

I didn't saw that movie so I may have misunderstood something (like a pun or a reference to another scene in the movie) .

Long story short : he insults her, she doesn't undersntand what he's saying.



hope it helped (the comments on youtube are indeed misleading)




EDIT: I went wiki and it's said that belmondo is saying "C'est vraiment dégueulasse " (It's so unfair) and not "Tu es vraiment dégueulesse!"). I played the scene again and I'm confused. however, this makes more sense if the dying guy has no grudge against against th girl.

I'm not a French speaker but to me it sounds like:

1"C'est vraiment dégueulasse."
2"Qu'est-ce qu'il a dit ?"
3"Il a dit: 'vous êtes vraiment une dégueulasse'"
4"Qu'est-ce que c'est, 'dégueulasse' ?"

1"It's really disgusting" (literal), but i understand it as "It really sucks" or "This really sucks"
2"What did he say ?"
3"He said: you're really disgusting." (literal), but i understand it as "He said: you really suck"
4"What is 'disgusting' ?", (literal). Without context it's hard to interpret this one and i haven't watched this movie, to me it could either be "What sucks?" or "What does 'suck' mean?".

Edit: oops, ninja'd by a French speaker ;)

Thanks a lot, guys, that was very helpful. It's the beautiful ambiguity of the scene which causes slight variants in translation to have very different meanings. And I guess he's speaking a bit unclear - it's indeed hard to make out if he's saying "tu es" or "c'est". Which, knowing Godard, is probably very much intended.

But yeah, the main problem was the word "dégueulasse".

Thanks again.

Good work noticing the ambiguity (cf my late EDIT on my previous post). I was mislead myself by the subtitles, but you're right ,the ambiguity "tu es" and "c'est" is admirable.

Edit again : the beauty of the thing is that Namur and myself understood the two different things ...

Regarding your edit, the whole relationship between the dying guy and the girl is very ambiguous (For example, the girl has betrayed the guy to the police - she did this because she didn't know if she loved him. She figured that, if she were able to betray him, that would probably mean she didn't really love him), which feeds heavily into the final scene.

Also, the guy is French and the girl American, and I just realized their affair hints at the relationship between these two countries. Yeah... I was leaning towards "tu es" at first, but Belmondo breathes the t in a way that leaves room for doubt. I'm certain that's no coincidence.

Further edit: What's cool too is that it was the fact that you and Namur came up with something different which caused me to listen closely and realize the intentional unclear pronunciation.

Ah, the girl not being French kinda clears things when it comes to interpreting the last line. She was inquiring about the actual meaning of the word then, and not expressing ambiguity about its meaning.

I guess i'll have to watch this one sometime, that scene got me curious.

I would recommend that. There are so many Good Old french Movies ... but I don't know if they ever were translated. French is a very rich language, perfect for making amazing dialogues ... it's a shame that today hardly nobody can make good use of it.

I loathe most of modern french movies, I often wonder how we can achieve such low quality in movies today , given our past. I'm not even sure to know a good french TV show.

I remember watching quite a few old French movies, back in the day when we only had two TV channels here ;)

But that was a long time ago and i'd be in trouble if i had to pinpoint exactly wich ones. Even so, Simone Signoret, Deneuve, Belmondo, Alain Delon and a few others were failry well known names around here due to the movies that aired on our public TV.

It's not just France. The state of Italian cinema is pretty dire too, for example, and they have a similarly impressive tradition - Fellini, De Sica, Antonioni, Rossellini, Visconti, Pasolini...
Germany isn't exactly on top of the film world, either.

But yeah, the French movies of the 50s and 60s are magnificent. I especially love Godard's Breathless and Pierrot le Fou and Truffaut's The 400 Blows. The most recent French movie I've seen that I truly love is Au revoir les enfants by Louis Malle, which was made in the late 80s, I believe.

The best English translation for this word is "disgusting", they both can be used in nearly all the same ways in both languages and mean nearly the same thing.

Though if someone can explain why the French need 15 or so variations of "con" I'd be appreciative:)

Well, at the origin, "con" is a slang word for the female genitalia. So, when you said "sale con" to somebody, you basically said that he was a "dirty c--t", which is not very nice. ^_^ From there certainly comes all the masculine/feminine variations of "connard" and "connasse".

More recently, "con" began to mean "stupid". But what's tricky is that it can be used as well in an insulting way as in a "friendly" way. If you say something like "pauvre con", it is always an insult meaning "you're really very stupid". But you can use it in a very colloquial way with your friend in the form of "t'es con !" or "arrete tes conneries", as well as "petit con !". With your friends, it will respectively mean "you"re stupid" (in an affectuous way), "stop joking!" and "you stupid you". But if you use the same expressions with other people than your friends or family, it will be insulting, so be careful ;)

As always, it's a matter of context! ^_^

Thanks, I just always found it amusing that it had so many variations. Salaud/Salope only switches between male and female, con is way more versatile. And like you said, way more dependent on context.

Have you seen Les tontons flingueurs ?

Nope. Never even heard of it, but I'm always interested in movie tips.

Wikipedia tells me that Lino Ventura plays the lead, which is certainly a good sign.