[QUOTE=clairobscur]
You’re overthinking it. Quite simply there are plenty of idioms that don’t exist in other languages, so you have to express the idea using plain, boring, ordinary sentences. For instance, I can’t think of any equivalent to something as trivial as “sitting on the fence”, either.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed. And sometimes, we collectively decide to mug other languages for their useful idioms. These days it is for example not unusual to read in the papers that someone s’est tiré une balle dans le pied (shot himself in the foot) or that someone in the group is trying to *passer la patate chaude *(toss the hot potato). My translation teacher frowned and kept reminding us these were technically barbarisms… but they work, and they’re popular, so now they’re not IMO :). Another, this one an actual barbarism, is perdu la vie (lost their lives), again often found in the news - but the actual French way to say this exists : it’s *trouvé la mort *(found their deaths) !
Literally the same in Spanish, which also doesn’t line up ducks except at fairground booths. My family aren’t the only ones who say “how careless!” whenever the TV says someone has lost his life, I’ve heard it from people nearby in bars and on the train.
A fun related expression in Quebecois French is, “c’est arrangé avec le gars des vues.” Literally, “it was arranged with the guy from the movies.” Colloquially, it refers to a situation that works out in such a perfect and/or unlikely way that it seems it must have been set up, like in a movie.
