cosy (anglicisme)

Pizzly's Koala

Pizzly's Koala

New Member
British English
Hello tout le monde !

Je me retrouve bloquée lors d'une traduction littéraire, car l'auteure française utilise un anglicisme : "Cosy".
Dans son oeuvre, ce terme provoque l'incompréhension car un des personnages ne comprends pas l'anglais.

Comment pourrais je le traduire, y a t-il un gallicisme que je pourrais utiliser en contrepartie ? Je sèche complètement.

"ça sert à quoi?"
"C'est pour donner un côté plus cosy à cet endroit."
"Co... quoi?"
"Co-sy. Plus intime."
"Ah... et ça sert à quoi ?"

Pour plus de contexte.

Merci beaucoup ~
 
    • I've never heard anyone use "sympathique" in english before.
    I used "douillet" for now. It's just so frustrating ahah
     
    Could an English adjective borrowed from German work?
    What about gemütlich?

    Edit : Or you might be looking for some Gallicism.
     
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    Vous pourriez peut-être aussi garder cosy et reporter le gallicisme sur un autre mot. Par exemple, cosy décor (en gardant l'accent aigu pour marquer visuellement le mot importé), ou autre mot ou expression si decor paraît trop courant en anglais.
     
    Reynald said:
    Vous pourriez peut-être aussi garder cosy et reporter le gallicisme sur un autre mot. Par exemple, cosy décor (en gardant l'accent aigu pour marquer visuellement le mot importé), ou autre mot ou expression si decor paraît trop courant en anglais.
    Click to expand...
    The word 'decor' - with or without the accent - is not seen as a "gallicisme" in English. It's a standard word which everyone understands. Even if the speaker kept the accent aigu and pronounced it exactly as in French, the English listener would hear 'dayCOR'. This pronunciation is not very different from the English 'DAYcor' and so would be instantly understood.

    I think Misterk's example in #2 is perfect.
     
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    Another suggestion:

    If it doesn't have to be a French word, how about the Danish hygge ? That's used in English to refer to Nordic-style cosiness, but not everyone is familiar with the term.

    It's a loan word which is reasonable to drop into an English sentence these days. But it's also reasonable to expect that a fellow English-speaker might not understand it.

    -What's that for?
    - It's to give the place a touch of hygge.
    -     Who ... what?
     
    Where I come, Montreal, people interject French all the time, but on American TV I have heard people say "simpatico" in contexts like this and it always has a bit of pretentious ring to it.
     
    tartopom said:
    Could an English adjective borrowed from German work?
    What about gemütlich?
    Click to expand...
    Wordy McWordface said:
    If it doesn't have to be a French word, how about the Danish hygge ?
    Click to expand...
    The German word means the same thing.
    I agree that in the translation the foreign word doesn’t have to be French.
    Is “cozy” used occasionally in French but not universally recognized, or is it just not used in French at all?
     
    In French the word "cosy" was much in use in the sixties to refer to a piece of furniture (short for cosy corner). It was a craze, every home was supposed to have one.
    cosy.jpg
     
    Yes, it is used occasionally in French, often in decoration magazines ("how to improve your home", etc., that kind of articles). It's now included in the Petit Larousse as an adjective.

    In the use mentioned by Joelooc, it was a noun (un cosy).
     
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    Pizzly's Koala said:
    I've never heard anyone use "sympathique" in english before.
    Click to expand...

    I certainly have, and I've used it myself, for the usual reason English people use foreign words - because English lacks a precise equivalent. Whilst I wouldn't use the word in some company, I wouldn't think it at all pretentious if used in reasonably educated company; I wouldn't use 'simpatico', because that would still (in the UK) come across as a foreign word proclaiming some knowledge of Italian, whereas sympathique is a word adopted by the English and pretty widely recognised (or so I believe). I don't know German, but I'm certainly familiar with gemütlich (and Gemütlichkeit), and that's much less commonly used than sympathique. Hygge is much more recent (as a loan word in English) and trendy - I think a much smaller group of people in the UK would be familiar with it.
     
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    I guess it seemed logical to look for a gallicism at first, like sympathique, but if a more trendy word like hygge fits, why not? It depends on the context and the time of the story, I think it wouldn't work for a story that takes place before 2000 or even 2010 in an English speaking country.
     
    Pizzly's Koala said:
    I've never heard anyone use "sympathique" in english before.
    I used "douillet" for now. It's just so frustrating ahah
    Click to expand...
    I'm confident that you've never heard douillet used in English. I can imagine someone with a basic familiarity with French using "sympathique" with an exaggerated pronunciation. I don't think very many people would understand what "hygge" means (I've certainly never heard it before, unlike the widespread usage of cosy in French) but sympatique is close enough to sympathetic to permit comprehension after thinking about it a bit, which more or less matches your initial text in French.
     
    Pizzly's Koala said:
    Hello tout le monde !

    Je me retrouve bloquée lors d'une traduction littéraire, car l'auteure française utilise un anglicisme : "Cosy".
    Dans son oeuvre, ce terme provoque l'incompréhension car un des personnages ne comprends pas l'anglais.

    Comment pourrais je le traduire, y a t-il un gallicisme que je pourrais utiliser en contrepartie ? Je sèche complètement.

    "ça sert à quoi?"
    "C'est pour donner un côté plus cosy à cet endroit."
    "Co... quoi?"
    "Co-sy. Plus intime."
    "Ah... et ça sert à quoi ?"

    Pour plus de contexte.

    Merci beaucoup ~
    Click to expand...
    "Cosy" est très souvent employé par les français. Je ne vois pas de terme spécifique dans notre langue. Larousse suggère comme synonymes : confortable, douillet ou agréable
     
    Víctor Pérez said:
    Deux gallicismes qui, à mon avis, pourraient très bien être utilisés en contrepartie:
    - coquet
    - cachet
    Click to expand...
    Je pense en effet que cachet conviendrait bien, il a le même sens en anglais, mais est-ce que c'est le cas de coquet ? Le WRD donne comme verbe (rare) 'flirter, badiner', et comme nom (dated, male flirt) '(un) coquet, charmeur, dragueur'.
    @Lauretess, @Pizzly's Koala cherche un équivalent en anglais de l'anglicisme cosy (dans le texte en français), donc à priori un gallicisme (pour le texte en anglais).
     
    J'ai cherché dans plusieurs dictionnaires anglais et, en effet, si le mot coquet est bien employé dans le sens de charmeur, et ce, pour les personnes seulement. Dire, par exemple, "a coquet apartment", ne ferait aucun sens.

    Je retire donc coquet comme suggestion.
     
    Hygge is completely unknown amongst most English-speakers too (unlike cosy in French). But if that's what the OP prefers, good luck to her!
     
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