Nonsensical translations...

Question

As a note, this is very poorly written for English speaking people to translate. "Happy as a clam" = "heureux comme un poisson dans l'eau" uh, sure. Why not just write "happy like a fish in water" so we could actually translate it? "Don't be pigheaded" = "ne
sois pas têtue comme une mule" again, why not just say "don't be stubborn like a mule". "I could eat a horse" = "j'ai une faim de loup" - why not just say "hungry like a wolf". Made this exercise unnecessarily hard.

Maarten Kamp · Accepted Answer

Expressions are often difficult to translate.
This exercise was to translate from English expressions (which themselves can be quite regional) to French ‘equivalents’. 
Just being given direct translations to do would miss the point that there are many expressions in both languages that don’t have a direct word for word equivalent in the other, and expressions that do have a similar meaning can be quite unexpected in structure. There may also be multiple ‘close’ expressions that can be used, but as a self-marked exercise, if confident that an unlisted alternative is correct, no need to mark down.
This is a C1 level exercise - approaching native speaker proficiency. It is meant to test and stretch people at or close to that level - and at this level, I don’t think it is a fair criticism that it was ‘too hard’, and that it should be made easier.

Chris Wirt · Answer

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Jennifer Sjostedt · Answer

Maarten - I get what you're saying, and I'm not sure "hard" is the right word to use, but all the phrases that Nick suggested are legitimate English idioms or phrases.   I also find exercises of this nature frustrating.  While I'm interested in learning the expressions, it takes time to look them up and then discover that I didn't get what the translation was looking for anyway.  I would find it more beneficial to have the phrases given and have to put them to use.  For example, tell me that "être têtu comme une mule" means "to be pigheaded" and I can get from there to the subjunctive conjugation and the noun/adjective agreement required by the translation.  Or - and it literally just occurred to me, doh - I suppose I could just not put anything at all and find out what Kwizlet wants from me - time saving, but even less useful as a learning tool.