"fiction"

Bastiat's line "L'État, c'est la grande fiction à travers laquelle tout le monde s'efforce de vivre aux dépens de tout le monde."

is translated as,

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé defines "fiction" first of all as "Mensonge, dissimulation faite volontairement en vue de tromper autrui."

Is there a better English translation of "fiction"?

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on January 23, 2011 at 11:47pm

Falsehood

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Permalink Reply by deluded on January 24, 2011 at 1:04pm

So, do you think "fiction" is not a good translation?

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on January 24, 2011 at 3:25pm

Right. Since the dictionnaire gives mensonge as the primary synonym. That word means a lie.

It's a nice point, since I'd have used the english word fiction without thinking about it, if I'd been translating.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on January 24, 2011 at 3:37pm

I think for the meaning you mention, and possibly your sentence, "fabrication" could work in English. I don't think "fiction" is wrong as such, though: even in English you can say things like "that's pure fiction" to mean "that's a pure fabrication".

By the way, don't read too much into the order of the definitions. Just because dictionary X lists a particular nuance first doesn't mean it's the most common (conversely, if the dictionary lists meanings in chronological order of first attestation, the first one could well be by definition the least common nowadays). Notice that their meaning of "fiction" meaning something close to "mensonge" is motivated by examples dating back to 1825 and 1865, and "fiction" is generally used alongside another adjective in these cases...