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moyens de réserve élastique de précontrainte
champ libre
May 14, 2020 22:04
4 yrs ago
54 viewers *
French term

ll ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer

French to English Social Sciences Philosophy Richelieu quote
This quote is being used a lot regarding Covid-19, but I didn't think it quite belonged in the dedicated section. I know what it means, but I feel like there should be an authoritative English translation out there, but I can't find it. Does anyone know?
Proposed translations (English)
4 +1 Do not fear everything, but be prepared for it.
3 +8 Hope for the best, prepare for the worst
5 Not everything should be feared, everything must, however, be prepared.
5 One need not fear all things, but one need to prepare for all things.
4 preparedness is the antidote to fear
3 +1 Don't be scared, be prepared!
4 not everything needs to be feared, but everything should prepared for
3 One/People should not be completely overpowered by fear, but should be prepared for anything
Change log

May 15, 2020 19:54: Yolanda Broad changed "Term asked" from "l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer" to "ll ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer"

Discussion

Wolf Draeger May 15, 2020:
Fear is the mother of foresight Another option, attributed to Thomas Hardy and Henry Taylor. A versatile quote—perhaps too versatile for your needs :-)
Carol Gullidge May 15, 2020:
@Joan Like so many Askers, you say you “know what it means” but haven’t given us your take. :(
Anne Schulz May 15, 2020:
I agree with Phil, this has a strong smell of copying from one another – all instances of this "quote" I can find on the web are from portals or blogs written within a few days at the beginning of May.
<br /><br />If you are allowed to translate freely, you could use a documented quote from Chinese general Sun Tzu instead: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." <br />(He actually goes on to say: "If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." – While this is probably not what the quoters had in mind, 'know yourself as well as the enemy' seems an appropriate piece of advice to me for people involved in the decision-making during the current panpidemic ;-)
Joan Berglund (asker) May 14, 2020:
@Phil Given what a hard time I'm having finding it, I wonder if you are right about it being made up. I'm just not entirely happy with anything I've come up with so far.
philgoddard May 14, 2020:
Doesn't matter where it comes from. I don't think there's any need to find someone else's translation to copy, assuming it even exists. And in my experience, online quotes are often made up, and frequently attributed to Einstein.
Joan Berglund (asker) May 14, 2020:
Does anyone know what work the quote is from? EDIT Yes, as I stated in my entry, the quote is attributed to Richelieu. I am trying to find out what work. When I google the French, I only get recent tweets/discussions/news stories using the quote in the context of COVID response, if info about the original source of the Richelieu quote was ever online I can't seem to dig it up.
Cyril Tollari May 14, 2020:
Be prepared not scared

Proposed translations

+1
1 hr
French term (edited): l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer
Selected

Do not fear everything, but be prepared for it.

I think this is nice and simple, and stays close to the French. And you don't necessarily have to repeat "everything" as the source text does. Whether it's really by Richelieu is neither here nor there.
Peer comment(s):
agree Paulina Sobelman
7 hrs
neutral Jennifer White : prepared for what? This would sound better without "for it"
11 hrs
Everything. It would be too vague without "for it".
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "This is pretty close to what I went with."
3 mins
French term (edited): l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer

Not everything should be feared, everything must, however, be prepared.

Here is a try for you.
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11 mins
French term (edited): l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer

One/People should not be completely overpowered by fear, but should be prepared for anything

...anything that might happen.

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Note added at 23 mins (2020-05-14 22:27:41 GMT)
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Or "completely overwhelmed".

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Note added at 25 mins (2020-05-14 22:29:36 GMT)
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https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/overpower

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Note added at 27 mins (2020-05-14 22:31:58 GMT)
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https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/overcome-fear-a...
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45 mins
French term (edited): l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer

preparedness is the antidote to fear

my take
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+1
1 hr
French term (edited): l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer

Don't be scared, be prepared!

Or : don't be scared, (rather) be prepared!


From "sage journal"

Rather than concerning ourselves with “governing trauma” we should instead be concerned with how trauma has come to govern us. Trauma talk now comes naturally, and the article explores what all this trauma talk might be doing, ideologically and politically, especially in the context of the relationship between security and anxiety. The management of trauma and anxiety has become a way of mediating the demands of an endless security war: a war of security, a war for security, a war through security. The article therefore seeks to understand the concept of trauma and the proliferation of discourses of anxiety as ideological mechanisms deployed for the security crisis of endless war; deployed, that is, as a training in resilience.

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Note added at 1 hr (2020-05-14 23:32:35 GMT)
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Seems to be widespread

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32181864/

https://www.preventionweb.net/publications/view/8820

https://www.wfmz.com/news/sunrise/don-t-be-scared-be-prepare...

Example sentence:

Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared”: Trauma-Anxiety-Resilience

Don't Be Nervous, Don't Be Flustered, Don't Be Scared. Be Prepared

Reference:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0304375412449789

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Sg4ChdA1s

Peer comment(s):
neutral philgoddard : This is clever, but too colloquial and gimmicky given that it's supposed to date from the 17th century.
9 mins
agree Verginia Ophof
13 hrs
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2 hrs
French term (edited): l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer

not everything needs to be feared, but everything should prepared for

Just a suggestion.

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Note added at 2 hrs (2020-05-15 00:23:14 GMT)
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Or better, “Not everything needs to be feared, but be prepared for everything”.
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+8
4 hrs
French term (edited): l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

This idiom won't be suitable to all or perhaps even most contexts, and of course it has nothing to do with Richelieu, but at least it's well established in English, and it isn't entirely out of place in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The attribution of the FR to Richelieu looks rather shaky to me, it sounds like the kind of thing any successful statesman or military leader might say. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure Julius Caesar or Churchill said something awfully like it...

As an aside, the "quote" may be spreading (!) throughout Le French Web because it seems to have featured in a memo on public health crisis preparedness addressed to Candidate Macron back in 2016.

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Note added at 4 hrs (2020-05-15 02:30:26 GMT)
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You'd be forgiven for thinking the current policy of world leaders is to hope for the worst and scorn the best, but that's another story...
Peer comment(s):
agree Carol Gullidge : In fact this sounds more optimistic / encouraging if the two phrases are reversed: “prepare for the worst; hope for the best”/ I actually prefer the order of the ST
4 hrs
Ah, but optimism is so unfashionable these days, you have to be doomsday to be legit in the right circles...Ta!
agree erwan-l
4 hrs
Ta!
agree Lyle Translations : This is the most natural-sounding solution to me.
5 hrs
Ta!
agree Verginia Ophof
10 hrs
Ta!
agree katsy
15 hrs
Ta!
agree SafeTex : short and sweet
16 hrs
Ta!
agree Yolanda Broad
17 hrs
Ta!
agree Don Green : Yes!
4 days
Ta!
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8 hrs
French term (edited): l ne faut pas tout craindre, mais il faut tout préparer

One need not fear all things, but one need to prepare for all things.

I don't believe there is an authoritative translation, but I think what I wrote does it justice.
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