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French trouble -- "dès lors que" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| CorneliusSneek Newbie Canada Joined 4915 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Latin, French | Message 1 of 6 06 September 2015 at 5:34am | IP Logged |
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Could anybody help me translate the following into English. I'm especially having
difficulty with "dès lors que": "Ce que le peintre imagine et ce qu'il nous révèle ne saurait être dès lors que ce corps spirituel dont parle saint Paul au chaptire XV de la première épitre au Cointhiens, en l'opposant au corps animal, ou, pour mieux serrer le sens immédiat du texte grec, en opposant le corps de l'esprit à celui de l'ame." Any help would be much appreciated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4053 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes  Studies: German | Message 2 of 6 06 September 2015 at 11:46pm | IP Logged |
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I get the impression that there might be something "incomplete" about the citation, particularly following "dès lors que". I "Googled" the phrase and I came away something short of enlightened. However, it seems that you (we) are not alone.
dès lors que Then again, it could be quite simple! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| CorneliusSneek Newbie Canada Joined 4915 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Latin, French | Message 3 of 6 07 September 2015 at 1:43pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your response, Speakeasy.
I've double checked the citation and it's all there. What I can't decide is if the "que" belongs to "dès lors" or to the preceding "ne" as in "ne saurait être...que." Puzzling. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 6 07 September 2015 at 10:02pm | IP Logged |
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In my opinion "dès lors" is just padding without any real function or meaning. From a grammatical point of view it is a temporal adverbial, but "lors" doesn't refer to any specific point in time here. In English you could have used something like "at the end of the day", which can be used even though absolutely nothing is going to happen at the end of the day.
Try reading the sentence without "dès lors", and the structure becomes slightly less obscure: "Ce que le peintre imagine (...) ne saurait être (...) que ce corps spirituel dont parle saint Paul (...)". So nothing is missing: the real problem is that the sentence structure is severely overloaded with superfluous elements. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5409 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 5 of 6 08 September 2015 at 8:34am | IP Logged |
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As Iversen said, "dès lors" doesn't function with "que" here. I don't know how this "dès lors" could be translated accurately in English but here it means something like "following what we have said"/"consequently"/"from there, (it follows that)/therefore", etc.
The beginning could then* be roughly translated "Therefore, what the painter imagines and what he reveals to us can not be anything else than this spiritual body..." * This "then" could make a good "dès lors" I think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| CorneliusSneek Newbie Canada Joined 4915 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Latin, French | Message 6 of 6 08 September 2015 at 3:22pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you, Iversen and akkadboy.
Leaving out "dès lors" the passage is indeed much less obscure, and resonates better with the overall context. And, akkadboy, your translation is what I got too. Thanks to all for your help! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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