stand up for your right

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 20, 2011 at 4:16am

For "stand up for", use verbs like "défendre", "affirmer", "revendiquer".

 

If by "you", you mean "people in general", then use "son droit", so: On doit défendre son droit (I think "ses droits" = "one's rights" would be a bit more common unless you're specifying which right (e.g. "le droit au vote", "le droit de voter" = "the right to vote", but I guess it's the same issue in French and English).

 

If you mean "you" as in some specific people you're talking to, then generally use "Vous devez défendre votre droit".

 

You could use "ton droit" if you're speaking to a single person that you're on familiar (e.g. first name) terms with, then it would be "Tu dois défendre ton droit".

 

In all of these cases, you could also replace "On doit...", "Vous devez..." or "Tu dois..." with "Il faut...". For example: Il faut défendre son droit. I guess this makes it a bit less of an obligation that the person must fulfil immediately, and more a statement along the lines of "It's generally important that...".

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Permalink Reply by yong leong on February 20, 2011 at 5:42am

Thank very much Neil, it is so wonderful to be able to get help just like that. And I see how easy it is for me to make mistake in french just by simply translating directly from english. It doesn't always work that way does it?

     I normally like to stick to one verb or phrase until I am quite familiar with it. So for now I just use 'défendre'.

        Best regards, Yong Leong

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