Help with translation..

I need some help translating "The Beautiful Life" in English to French. I understand that it is "Le Belle Vie" or "La Belle Vie" but i am not too sure whether to use le or la? It is for a tattoo on a female and basically means a life of beautiful things.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on June 2, 2009 at 6:18pm

In this case, it would be la. When you look a word up in the French dictionary, look out for whether it's marked as "Masculine" or "Feminine". If it's feminine, you generally use la. (Note that if a word begins with a vowel, you'd generally use l' instead, and there are one or two complications with a few words, but I'm guessing you don't need that level of detail!)

Incidentally, la belle vie in French tends to mean "a cushy life", "an easy life" rather than literally a life full of "beautiful things" as you put it!

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Permalink Reply by Kristy Dale on June 3, 2009 at 1:45pm

Wow! Thanks very much for that! Are you able to suggest another way of saying this? It's meant to mean a life of beautiful things in a way thats not really superficial and doesn't exactly refer to having nice things or being beautiful... Thank you..!