Blair/Chirac fisticuffs

[ajva]

Just spent lunchtime reading up on how the French papers are reporting the spat between Blair and Chirac over the CAP. Unsurprisingly, Le Monde and Liberation seem to be fairly sympathetic to Blair, and Le Figaro and France-Soir are backing Chirac, although any French person with half a brain and the slightest liberal sympathies would still be able to sigh at how crap zir president is by reading the reports in the right-wing papers.

Anyone out there who can translate a few words of French for me? I include the whole sentence for clarity; the italicized idiom eludes me and my dictionary...

Il faut dire qu'il n'y a pas été de main morte, accusant cette politique, chère au coeur de Chirac, d'être responsable de la misère du tiers-monde.

The quote's from left-wing stalwart Libération.

Comments

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Ooh, me me! I'm useful!

ne pas y aller de main morte => aider à sortir d’une situation difficile ie, to help to get out of something tricky...

ie in yr sentence it implies: it must said that "it's not helping", the phrase being used in a sarcastic sense.

Do you think this kind of thing means that I can put 'bilingual' on my cv?

dead hand etc.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Splendid! Thank you. :o)

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

Having conferred with a Frenchman and a Quebecois, I'm told it's effectively "no punches were pulled"

[ajva.livejournal.com]

And many thanks also to the linguist in the kitty cat outfit!

Re: Tranlation

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Fantastic! Thanks very much! God, this LJ lark really fucking rocks. Within a couple of hours I have loads of answers to my query - including one from you, M. Gruuk, who appear to be a francophone Canadian I've never heard of before in my life! Thank you indeed, stranger!

:oD

Re: Tranlation

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

That'll be the quebecois I mentioned ;)

Re: Tranlation

[ajva.livejournal.com]

:o) :o) :o)



Modern superfast hypercommunication, I love it.