Se tourner les pouces

Le chat bureaucrate se tourne les pouces // The cat bureaucrat is twiddling his thumbs

After a few soul-destroying experiences with Spanish bureaucracy I felt a sudden urge to draw a pic dedicated to this excellent subgroup of the population — governmental workers in public admin. Those of you who don't know anything about it — those are guys and gals who get a contract for life and are practically impossible to get rid of. I will stop here because the rant could be endless.

Anyway, some goodish while ago a symbol of such a person in Russia was a specific item of clothing — black oversleeve (protège-manche in French), protecting the sleeves, mostly in the elbow areas, from being worn out.

Short research by Kirill showed that at least in Germany the oversleeves have a similar connotation. Not sure about France, but we are not trying to be accurate here, just following the string of associations.

One of the things that public servants can't be fired for is doing nothing, or, of course, twiddling their thumbs. To our delight, the expression proved to exist in French too.

Of course, there are at least two incongruencies in the pic above. First, the cat doesn't have elbows, so there is little to protect. Second, he doesn't have thumbs either, so there is nothing to twiddle.

Three, actually. The cat is way too cute to be a bureaucrat in the first place.

Occupe-toi de tes oignons

Occupe-toi de tes oignons! // Mind your own business!

Another “vegetable” expression.

Looks like his onions need minding quite literally — one started sprouting while he wasn’t looking.

Pictures related to cats and onions @ Shutterstock.

smells scorched

ça sent le roussi // I am in trouble

Literally "Ça sent le roussi" means "it smells scorched", but it is an idiom, meaning there is a trouble brewing.

I am not sure why he is ironing shirts at all, he doesn't wear them. Maybe it is his meditation method. 

When pigs fly

Quand les poules auront des dents // Never

Day 5 of Inktober gives us "chicken" as a prompt. That comes two days after "roasted", I guess someone was hungry.

Anyhow, here is a lovely french idiom "Quand les poules auront des dents" - "When chickens have teeth", meaning never. Or, as it were, when pigs fly.

And here is a chicken, all ready for a Halloween party, looking rather splendid in his Dracula costume.

C'est une mauvaise chose à dire, mais ...

C'est un vrai cancre ; le professeur le met toujours au fond de la classe //

He's a real dunce; the teacher always puts him in the back of the classroom

Since today's Inktoner prompt ("roasted") doesn't really speak to me, I decided to take one from Transparent Language French Word of the Day again.

What a mean thing to say though. He is not slow or stupid, he is just dreamy. Look at him there, everybody is already gone and he is just sitting there looking at the last leaves of autumn.

Which reminds me of a lovely Spanish idiom "estar pensando en las musarañas" - to be distracted, dreamy, absent, but literally "to be thinking about the shrews". Why the shrews? Well, they are cute.

Un homme sans poil, c’est comme un jardin sans fleur

Un homme sans poil, c’est comme un jardin sans fleur. //
A man without body hair is like a garden without flowers.

Today, let’s take another delightfully silly phrase from Duolingo. “Poil” can be much more decently translated to simply “hair”, and in fact this is the version Google Translate insists on. But, apparently, it is a “saying” and it’s not the head hair what we are talking about here.

Duolingo discussion currently have another cute example of a similar (sort of) phrase in Turkish — “A man without belly, is like a house without balcony” :)

The cat is not so very sure about validity of this statement though. I mean, flowers he likes, but that furry patch... he needs to think about it just a bit more.

Pictures related to gardens and flowers @ Shutterstock.

Dormir à poings fermés

Le chat peut dormir comme une souche. Il peut dormir comme un loir. Mais il ne peut pas dormir à poings fermés. Cette situation le dérange.
// The cat can sleep like a log. He can sleep like a dormouse. But he can’t sleep like a baby. This situation bothers him.

We are going through “your daily routine" theme. One expression came up while talking about sleep — “dormir à poings fermés” — “sleep soundly”, “sleep like a baby”, but literally something like “to sleep with clenched fists". (Although it doesn’t sound very relaxed, babies really do sleep like that).

Now, the cat, due to his configuration, can’t clench his fists. He feel rater bothered by it, since he always thought himself an expert sleeper.

I used this site to look up sleep-related French idioms. “Dormir comme une marmotte”, “to sleep as a marmot” is my favorite because we have exact same expression in Russian — «дрыхнуть как сурок».

Pictures related to cats and sleep @ Shutterstock.

Le cheval a huit ans

Le cheval a huit ans / The horse is eight years old

This time the phrase comes from Duolingo site. I thought it was rather adorable and lends itself well to a little drawing.

Judging by the discussion under the phrase, native English speakers find it difficult to accept that age construction can contain verb “to have” (“avoir” in French, “a” in third person singular) and not the equivalent of “to be”. Fortunately I have already passed though this stage with Spanish. Spaniards also “have” their years, not “are” them, if I may say so.

Come to think of it, the Russian construction “Тебе сколько лет?” — “Мне 50”, implies by the grammatical cases that somebody went and gave the years to the speaker. I.e., the question can be interpreted as “How many years (were given to) you?” and the answer “I (was given) 50”. If so, Russians also “have” their years.