Translating swear words is a rare treat that requires an understanding of what’s behind the words and how much offence is intended as much as their actual meaning.
Warning: this post is about swearing. Those of a delicate disposition should stop reading now!
Without a doubt one of the expressions of the week (of 8th December) in France was Brigitte Macron’s “sales connes”. Newsworthy because she is the French First Lady, using an expression both very familiar to everyone in France and simultaneously completely at odds with her position.
So what was it all about? Well, Ms Macron was at a performance by comedian Ary Abittan, one of his first since being charged with rape of his former partner 3 years ago. The charges were dropped. The female and feminist protesters objected to Mr Abittan’s rehabilitation and presumably also the fact that his alleged victim has had no such closure. Ms Macron was recorded robustly expressing her disapproval at their interrupting the performance to protest. A hot mic and burning ears!
For us linguists, of course, the discussion is less about the difficulties of prosecuting rape cases or whether a First Lady should be describing feminist protesters in such guttural language but rather how this quintessentially French expression might be translated into other languages, and for me into English. This recent outburst and the ensuing discussion amongst linguists will be very reminiscent of one we had about almost the same word (more on that later) when a fuming Nicolas Sarkozy told a disaffected voter to “casse toi, pauvre con!” in 2008.
How to translate swear words
Swearing is always great material for a discussion of the mechanics of translation. It shows very clearly the parts of the translation process that are NOT and cannot be word-for-word transcoding. When you try to translate swear words, you have to consider not just the meaning of words but also their function in situ, their connotations and their degree of vulgarity, all of which have to be reflected in the translation and all of which become very obvious when they are badly translated. It is the concept of “equivalent effect” that the translator most often needs to apply when translating obscenity. Similarly the limits of dictionary translation becomes rapidly apparent.
For example, for Sarkozy’s “pauvre con” Collins English-French dictionary offers “poor jerk” and Linguee suggests “poor schmuck”. No self-respecting Brit would find either expression particularly insulting or natural – and that means they must be poor translations.
So how should we go about translating swear words? The linguist who knows both languages intimately can approach the job of translating swear words by intuition – simply imagining what they might say in a similar situation. Or they can approach it more methodically, by examining the actual meaning, the intended meaning, who is speaking to who and the impact of the words in question before trying to find equivalents in the other language. Whichever method the linguist chooses, they ought to arrive at the same result and since the former is by definition harder to explain, let’s try the latter with a couple of examples.
Sarkozy’s “pauvre con” 2008
In Mr Sarkozy’s “pauvre con” for example, “pauvre” is doing two things. It means “poor” of course, but is clearly being used figuratively, not literally. And while the English “poor” can also be used figuratively, when it is it means something very different. In French, the figurative “pauvre” means “pitiful” and implies condescension, not “unfortunate” as “poor” does in English. In English “poor” suggests sympathy rather than insult. Perhaps more importantly, “pauvre” is reinforcing the insult that follows. “Con” is considerably less offensive when used alone. “T’es con” is almost a term of endearment – something like “plonker” or “prat” in English, whereas “con” becomes quite harsh with a qualifier as in our two examples today, “sales connes” and “pauvre con”. So all in all, “poor” makes a poor translation of “pauvre”.
Moving on… dictionaries will tell us that “con” is both an adjective and noun meaning “stupid”, or “idiot” or “fool” respectively. I would add that I feel “con” refers to someone who does stupid things, rather than someone who is actually stupid, but that’s a personal bias, perhaps having been called “con” so often! We will also find “jerk” and “schmuck” suggested. But none of these are terribly rude and the last two are not very British either. On top of that, they have different same connotations – there is more contempt in “schmuck” than in “con”, and more anger in “con” (at least when used with a qualifier) than in “schmuck”.
If that were not enough, the erudite translator might point out that “con” also means vagina, and that – like “cunt” – has its roots in the Latin “cunnus”. None of the four dictionary options so much as hint at the female sex. Worse still, the etymology of “schmuck” is actually the yiddish word for penis! The more natural-sounding “prick” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny for the same reason. Likewise “dickhead”. “Cunt” on the other hand is just too obscene to match with the gentler “con”.
Dictionary meanings aside, we’ve also seen that “con” functions differently if there is a qualifier in French. So having perhaps over-thought things by now, we are still looking for something quite harsh to insult a person we look down on and consider to be acting stupidly. I arrive at “twat” as the translation into British English of “con”, it would appear both offensive enough and to tick the other boxes. Nota bene “twat” – pronounced “twot” – is a completely different proposition in the US.
That gives us “you sad twat!” for “pauvre con”.
Note also the addition of “you”. Direct address is essential if you want to insult someone to their face in British English.
There are other possible versions: “you prick” or “you bloody idiot“. If you did choose “prick”, you would be applying the technique Vinay and Darbelnet call “modulation”, where one language comes at an issue from a different point of view – here the male for the female genitalia – to express the same thing. Translating “enculé” as “fucker”, which one often does, would fall under the same heading – both the act and the agent have changed as the expression crosses from one language to another!
But my preference – heavily influenced as it is by the way people spoke and swore both where, and when, I grew up – remains “you sad twat!”.
Brigitte Macron’s “sales connes” 2025
We can take a similar approach to tackling Brigitte Macron’s “sales connes”. Starting at the beginning, let’s look at how “sales” is being used. We can see it is 1) again reinforcing the insult that will follow. We could use “bloody” to do this in English, but it’s out-dated and has lost its bite. “Sales” here has an enmity to it. Secondly, “sales” is clearly being used figuratively, rather than literally. Brigitte does not think the protesters need a shower. A water-cannon perhaps, but not a shower! Figuratively “sale” in French means “person who is nasty, harmful, unpleasant”, so anything that means that will do the job. Now “dirty” can also be used figuratively in English, but like “poor” its figurative meaning is a world away from the French, meaning – as it often does – “perverted” when used this way in English. In my opinion, “dirty” (as in this example) would therefore be a misleading and incorrect translation of the French “sales”. My feeling then is that “stupid” fits the bill in English, where we can prefix almost any insult with the word “stupid” to mean “unpleasant” and to reinforce the slur that will follow.
Ms Macron’s “connes” is interesting in its similarities and differences to Mr Sarkozy’s “con”. Ostensibly the same word – indeed Larousse doesn’t give it a separate entry – French grammar makes this a different word with different connotations and addressees. “Conne” is no longer the word that means “vagina” and it is now an insult directed exclusively at women.
So “twats” is not such a good match on either front. “Bastards” is historically linked to men. So what insults are directed exclusively at women in English? Well there is “sluts”. But I think this would be a translation error, because like “dirty”, it has sexual connotations that the French does not. One news outlet did venture the doubly wrong “dirty sluts”, the horny pricks! (See what I did there?)
So what about ” bitches”? It is a frequently used insult in English and usually directed at women and it has a similar degree of vulgarity and insult to “connes”. OK. So we end up with “stupid bitches”.
Interestingly, the English-language press made a better go of translating “sales connes” than they did of “pauvre con” 17 years ago and many arrived at “stupid bitches” of their own accord and more quickly. I can’t imagine that is because journalists have got better at French in the meantime, nor that they have started running their copy by linguists before publication. My fear is that finding insulting terms to aim at women comes easier to them than it does finding them for men.
How would you render this in English and/or your A languages?
featured image: Vitaly Gariev / Unsplash
