Disclaimer: I taught myself to read French (for a certain value of “read”) so there are almost certainly big gaps in my understanding of constructions that others might find obvious. I’m working on reading the Boileau-Narcejac novel … Et mon tout est un homme. The narrator is reading a criminal’s rap sheet and is summarizing the facts for the reader.
I can make sense of most of it. “Trafic … de devises” stumped me at first, but now I think it means money-laundering. However, “rue Blanche” still has me completely mystified. I know rue Blanche is a real place in Paris, but that doesn’t make sense to me in this context unless perhaps it’s shorthand for saying that the “règlement de comptes sanglant” happened on rue Blanche.
I’ve searched the Internet and all my French dictionaries without luck.
Not quite, if it means the same as tráfico de divisas. In many countries, when you send large amounts of money out of the country (or take them with you), you’re expected to report the amount and pay taxes on it. Tráfico de divisas is failure to declare those amounts and pay the taxes, rather than the accounting tricks, fake businesses etc involved in money laundering.
Agree about currency controls (mandated exchange rates, no currency export etc), so you would get people doing illicit currency exchange. This is no longer the case in France, but used to be.
As for rue Blanche, my interpretation is the same as yours - the “règlement de comptes” took place in the rue Blanche. Rue Blanche used to be right in the heart of Paris’ red light district.
Rue blanche is a street/area known for its criminals and prostitutes. So in this sentence I would think it means the guy is known to hang out/loiter in rue blanche, to cause troubles, to pimp girls. That’s the nebulous thoughts that would cross my mind if I were to read that.
That’s my interpretation as well, although it’s true that the sentence quoted in the OP is a bit hard to follow due to the excess of commas. I might have changed some of them for semicolons but I’m not sure if it’d be better.
It’s two separate things but perhaps “trafic” is intended to apply to both. The first is clearly arms trafficking, and perhaps the second is black-market currency trafficking.
I agree the comma-infested list would make this hard to follow even in English. The “rue Blanche” reference appears to be an actual street where something happened, but it’s hard to tell whether it would be the robberies, the settling of accounts, or something else that is merely implied by naming the street.
Now that I think of it, it’s probably a stylistic choice. Since it’s actually a character’s rap sheet that’s being read, it’s written in list form and probably with very few verbs. The way the commas are used, it gives a rhythm to the narration and leaves us with the impression that the narrator is just there, in front of us, reading the sheet. Replacing some of the commas with semicolons, as I did earlier, changes the rhythm and not necessarily in a good way.
I’m having some trouble explaining it, but I think that’s the most likely reason.
I’m actually at a loss on how to parse that list. Due to the ambiguity of the commas, it could be read as:
or
But in either case, yes, the “rue Blanche” bit is giving the location of one of the crimes. I do not know that street or its reputation/history, maybe it would give an indication as to which crime pertains to it.