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komponisto comments on Malice, Stupidity, or Egalité Irréfléchie? - Less Wrong
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Comments (62)
On the pure grammar:
Egalité Irréfléchie.
(Also the first E is really É, but one is allowed to omit diacritics on uppercase letters.)
I'll defer to the native speakers on whether the phrase is a good translation. (Those native speakers may also want to have a look here, hint hint.)
I'm a native speaker. "Égalité Irrefléchie" sounds ankward. I preffer "Égalitarisme irréfléchi" (back to male gender by the way). The first would be "thoughtless equality", while my version would be "thoughtless egalitarianism". But frankly, neither sound very good.
We have an approaching idiomatic term however: "Nivellement par le bas". Which quite literally means achieving equality by lowering upper bounds instead of raising the lower ones. It calls the image of cutting mountains off instead of filling the valleys. This expression is widely used as an applause light when talking about schools. (Generally, it goes like: "Let's help failing children in such and such way", then "But that method will slow everyone else down! That's a nivellement par le bas!")
(Oh, and please don't forget the diacritic in Égalitarisme or "Égalité". French typography requires it)
English also has a similar term, "tall poppy syndrome". To make all the poppies the same height, you behead the tallest ones.
While it's true that diacritics on capitals are now recommended, it should be acknowledged that there was a tradition of leaving them out.
Thanks for the info on the expression nivellement par le bas.
I acknowledge the tradition, but have rejected it since I used a decent French layout. Now, you can easily have them with a US layout by using dead keys (they can a mild chore if write mostly in English though).
Are you in or near Paris by any chance? We have an upcoming meetup on June 25.
I'm not a native speaker of French. I'm not any speaker of French. I gave up on trying to learn it (and Japanese, except to say wakarimasen). German is tolerable. English is quirky, but has a big enough installed user base.
This (allowance to omit) comes from the days of mechanical typewriters, many of which could put accents on lowercase letters but not on uppercase ones. There's really no reason for it now (or ever, in handwriting).
Well, there is something of an analogous issue now, namely that accented uppercase letters are infrequent enough that I can never remember the codes, and always have to look them up: while I'll never forget Alt+0233 for é, I had already forgotten Alt+0201 for É after looking it up yesterday.
That having been said, I certainly agree that "Égalité" looks better than "Egalité".
No need to remember them; just subtract 32.
Thanks, amended title accordingly.
Please amend the phrase in the fourth paragraph counted from the bottom, too.