Bonjour, Julie

Cette phrase a connu son heure de gloire dans les années 70-80. Si ma mémoire ne me trompe pas, ça avait quelque chose à voir avec Giscard d'Estaing ou François Mitterand.

Amicalement
Bruno Magne

It is a saying that renders the same idea. Do not let anyone try to force you into using a word-for-word translation!

Maybe that is because I am French Canadian, but this is the way we always said it. It could be different in France, I suppose...

I was interested to see that other answers has "et" in the middle as I had not heard the saying put like that before. Nor had I heard the Canadian version.

For info, web searches showed up a fair number of lists of French sayings. Here is just one :

www.lodace.com/index1.htm

Curiosity getting the better of me, I looked into the Canadian version and found "... plus c'est pareil" on the following site :

www.ql.umontreal.ca/qlv5n13/03.html

The saying seems to be much-used by journalists in headings for articles, particularly in the political domain (I wonder why?!). In one list, the descritpion under the article heading explained how students in a certain part of Asia were no longer able to preprare the bark they need to do their calculations on. Further on, an article under the same heading was about Canadian Medical Officers in the Second World War and in Bosnia.

Hi, Julie

In my first answer, I used "et", because that's the familiar way.

According to the Grand Robert, the "correct way" would be the one above.

I wonder why "moel" made his comment about not "letting anyone force you to translate..." All answers are correct and were given out of the pleasure to help a fellow translator.
The fact that Canadians prefer "pareil" is just one more proof that the French language is alive and diverse. I reckon that French-speaking Africans must have a colorful expression of their own. does not mean

Hi, Julie

In my first answer, I used "et", because that's the familiar way.

According to the Grand Robert, the "correct way" would be the one above.

I wonder why "moel" made his comment about not "letting anyone force you to translate..." All answers are correct and were given out of the pleasure to help a fellow translator.
The fact that Canadians prefer "pareil" is just one more proof that the French language is alive and diverse. I reckon that French-speaking Africans must have a colorful expression of their own. does not mean

Bearing in mind that the inherent mission of a translator is to transfer ideas and not words from a code to another, I thought that this version was quite faithful in spirit to the original even if the syntax is rather different but after all, that's the burden of translation: equivalence in difference.

This expression is so familiar, so French, that I, who grew up (in England) often heard this one in French. It was often quoted around me, (parents, friends, teachers) ... in French. The French coined this phrase and we English adopted it, lock, stock and barrel, very often saying the first part alone, "plus ça change...", as indicated by a previous answerer. But perhaps we should not refuse to translate it - particularly as the original version is French!