I would like to use Queen Elizabeth's quote to Pres. Chirac today as an academic bowl question. But I don't speak French. Could someone please translate it accurately for me? In advance, thank you very much!

Queen said: "Vive la difference, mais vive L'Entente Cordiale!"

Well, I'll give it a shot:

Long live the difference (between the English and the French), but (also) long live the (ability to have a) cordial harmony (between us).

"Entente is typically translated as "agreement" - - was this a reference to a specific agreement? I wasn't aware that there was any, so I favored the more general term harmony.

Best wishes,

Rex


Best wishes,

Rex

You are probably aware that L'Entente Cordiale is an agreement that was signed in London on April 8, 1904 by the Secretary to the Foreign Office, Lord Lansdowne, and the French Ambassador, Paul Cambon. It can be translated as the Friendly Agreement. The Queen might have meant "Yes, we have our differences but we must nevertheless be friendly."

Ira guided me to this web site: free translation.com. You can get foreign languages/words translated into English.

According to the translation site, sentence means: Lively the difference, but lively the cordial understanding.

I'd say something like "Here's to our differences, but also here's to our "friendly agreement" (which overcomes our differences).

Well, I should have been alerted by the caps of l'Entente Cordiale. A piece of history I did not know. See http://www.entente-cordiale.org/en/1a.html to learn more.

Rex's translation of <i>vive</i> is the best. Which goes to show that the translation sites are to be used very carefully.

Hi naturegirl,

&gt;Lively the difference, but lively the cordial understanding.&lt;

Reversing the translation gives
&quot;Vif la diff&eacute;rence, mais vif la compr&eacute;hension cordiale.&quot;

which is why you have to be careful with machine translation.

Thanks to all of you who translated the phrase for me.

If any of you are interested, the BBC has a news article about the state visit &amp; the agreement at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3599291.stm

But then, others might (or might not) be amused by the jokes from the cheeky Sun newspaper (right side bar):
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004160426,00.html

Translation sites should indeed be approached with great caution. The classic joke about a mechanical translator was the one that translated &quot;hydraulic dam&quot; into Russian as &quot;water goat.&quot;

Ram! Hydraulic Ram!

travginney's post says it all. The use of the phrase &quot;L'Entente Cordiale&quot; has more meaning that the literal translation. Let's say it's a 'diplomatic nuance',encapsulating in one wonderful French phrase all the ups and downs of the relationship between the two countries over hundreds of years. Think Agincourt; think Trafalgar; think D Day; think European Union.

Wish I could speak French well enough to end with an appropriate 'bon mot'.

You probably just forgot August, 1914.

PS - what is an &quot;academic bowl question&quot;? It's not a phrase I have ever heard before.

Thanks.

&quot;academic bowl&quot; is a competition, often among high school students. Sort of &quot;Jeopardy&quot;-style. This would be a question for the competition.

alice, you are so right. That is why it is so difficult to translate!

Again, be careful with machine translation. I'm a professional translator (French-English/English-French)and what I've seen done by the machine has often been totally off.
Ginny