Daryo Aug 10, 2018:

Final clue in the coffin if all this is not to printed on some piece of paper and forgotten after few days but is to be tattooed on someone (as you mentioned it in some of the other related questions), I would suggest it's time for you to walk away. You have to know when to quit.

You can't get any meaningful information on the text to translate -I would guess that you still don't know if the "en" in:

"Tu vas l'aimer à en crever et tu ne pourras plus jamais t'en passer"

is about a "he" or a "she" or some "it", let alone anything resembling a context, and the translation is to be tattooed on someone?

I wouldn't get involved in such business.

Tony M Aug 9, 2018:

@ Asker "Tu vas l'aimer à en crever et tu ne pourras plus jamais t'en passer"
"You're going to love him till it nearly kills you and you'll never able to live without him"
"Love him, leave him – you'll die either way" is almost the sense you need to try to capture — though personally, I wouldn't like to have that tattooed on me!
It all depends so much on the feelings behind it, the intent with which it is said... and why one would ever want a tattoo of something in the 2nd person?

Tony M Aug 9, 2018:

@ Asker We've all had to start somewhere :-)

What is worrying here, though, is that your proposed translations seem to cast strong doubt on your mastery of what you claim to be your prinicipal target language; now THAT is something extremely dangerous even for someone starting out!
One of the first lessons we have to learn is to know our own limitations, and also, the limitations of what it is possible to do with a translation.
You latest suggestion "loved till death! Never forgotten! Your Stranger!" is barely understandable in EN, and again, fails to reflect the true meaning of the source text.
In a case like this, where sticking too close to the original text leads to an unwieldy result (although in fact the EN suggestions offered are barely longer then the FR text anyway), you really need to get right away from the source text and just treat it as a piece of creative writing — this is what you seem to have sought to do, but are falling between 2 stools: on the one hand, you have failed to convey the s/t meaning, and on the other, neither have you created a truly viable piece of EN creative writing — it sounds more like Yoda!

Tony M Aug 9, 2018:

@ Asker Your original proposal:
"You are gonna love it to death and won't do without him"
1) 'gonna' is a very American word, and probably out of place in a tattoo like this, unless you know specifically it is for the US market?
2) Given the symmetry of the original sentence, it is extremely risk to change from 'it' in the first part to 'him' in the second; the logical implication is that both halves of the expression are referring to the same "thing"
3) "won't do without" him completely changes the meaning — the use of won't (from 'will') expresses a notion of wanting to — in this negative sense, willfulness, like the child who says "I won't go to bed!" But the source text says "ne pourras..." the use of 'pouvoir' is quite strong in FR, and definitely suggests 'be able to'.

Your new suggestion "difficult till death without you", although certainly shorter, actually expresses 2 quite different notions — and introduces an ambiguity, since we dont know if it is 'difficult without you till I die' or 'difficult until death comes without you near me'.

Raj Sethi (asker) Aug 9, 2018:

Thanks Tony M- I think you are right. I am a learner in translation and I will only be able to get good at it if I get help from you all. I am sure many of you, by this time, have guessed that I am not as good as others are. But, I think, with help from all of you, I will do it one day. Back to your entry, You said that my translation above is not right and changes the meaning of the text? Why is it not right? what is the source text saying? The customer wants to get a tattoo made and the last suggestion that I have thought of giving is this: "loved till death! Never forgotten! Your Stranger!

Tony M Aug 9, 2018:

@ Asker None of us can possibly help you, since your customer is the ONLY person who knows what they think it's about! All we can do is guess the same as you.
Your latest suggestion, apart from being rather silted and arguably not terribly idiomatic in EN, also quite drastically changes the meaning from the source text.
I think your best course of action would be to tell this difficult and unco-operative customer that you are unable to deal with this translation, which cannot possibly be worth wasting any more of your time on for just a few centimes...
Sometimes you just have to know when to call it a day...

Kevin Oheix Aug 9, 2018:

Asker Maybe "you won't get enough of it" or something similar.

Raj Sethi (asker) Aug 9, 2018:

Hello, I already translated this as You are gonna love it to death and won\'t do without him\". Now, the client says that this is for a tattoo, and she wants it to be as short as possible. I have thought of, \"difficult till death without you\". I still don\'t know who says it and really don\'t know about 1st, 2nd person, 3rd person in this one. Could any one of you help me here please.

Tony M Aug 8, 2018:

@ Asker In essence, not really! But at least we now know what style of language would be appropriate, which might help!
However, it is clearly now vital to know who or what the « l' » and « en » refer to, as in EN this will have to be fixed, it simply cannot be left ambiguous as it is in FR!!

Raj Sethi (asker) Aug 8, 2018:

Hello, everyone this is the message I have just received from this client. This text appears to be for a tattoo. Now, I am being asked for a shorter way to translate this. This is what he wrote: bonjour, merci pour ces propositions. est qu'il existe une maniere un peu plus courte de dire : "Tu vas l'aimer à en crever et tu ne pourra plus jamais t'en passer" ? car c'est pour un tatouage mais tout en gardant parfaitement le meme sens...

Daryo Aug 8, 2018:

l'aimer = le(la?) aimer // s'en passer

"le / en" must be refering to some "il/elle", BUT "il/elle" is not necessarily "he/she" ....

basic grammar ... or basic trap to avoid.

Raj Sethi (asker) Aug 7, 2018:

Thanks Daryo for helping me. I have also asked the client about who is writing? is it about a gift? she says she is about to to board a flight and tell me later. Back to your suggestion, You said that "il/elle is there in the French text", but I don't see it? where is it?

Daryo Aug 7, 2018:

If the gift was sent anonymously ["from your secret admirer" - thank kind of spiel ...] ... then the sender [i.e. the narrator] would be "ton inconnu"?

Sounds like a very likely scenario to me, makes the whole story coherent.

As far as I can see, this interpretation of the ST passes the Occam's razor test ...

Also, I would think that the "inconnu" is in fact the one asking for a translation of this message ...

« Je serai ton inconnu.
Je suis ton inconnu »

I will be your mystery man (=you don't know who I am) (or possibly woman ...?)
I'm your mystery man

same sense of "mystery" as in "mystery shopper" ...

Tony M Aug 7, 2018:

@ Daryo I see the point you are making — but surely that then makes
« Je serai ton inconnu.
Je suis ton inconnu »
even more enigmatic than it already is?
"I'm going to be a stranger to you; I already am a stranger to you" sounds to me more like one man (lover?) has supplanted the ex in (probably) 'her' [= tu] life.

Daryo Aug 7, 2018:

Also the "il / elle" in French could be any inanimate object, and I'm 99 % sure that it's the case here.

Tu vas l'aimer à en crever et tu ne pourras plus jamais t'en passer.

it's about some gift:

You will like it [=my gift] very much (/ You'll be smitten by it) and you won't be able to do without it / to live without it.

Daryo Aug 7, 2018:

@ Asker twice you are asking the wrong question:

what you have in your text is

"se passer de quelqu’un ou de quelque chose" nothing much to do with "passer"

same as

"à en crever" has little to do with "crever"

Getting the first step right usually helps ...

Kevin Oheix Aug 7, 2018:

Here, it means you'll get "addicted" to that person and won't be able to get by or live without him/her. In other words, X is so mad about (in love with) Y that X can't imagine not having Y.

David Hollywood Aug 7, 2018:

and if she's a French-speaker, she should give some credence to native English-speakers

David Hollywood Aug 7, 2018:

the translation is fine as corroborated by peers

David Hollywood Aug 7, 2018:

say you're ok with it and ask her why she's asking for modifications

Raj Sethi (asker) Aug 6, 2018:

Yes, this is what I think. I sent him my draft. she not he, now, says she needs more modifications done to the entire sentence.

David Hollywood Aug 6, 2018:

in the sense of "forget" and go on

David Hollywood Aug 6, 2018:

ok so we can go with "get over him"

Raj Sethi (asker) Aug 6, 2018:

I don't think so, david

David Hollywood Aug 6, 2018:

is this a song?