Vocabulary Lesson

The French economic journalist in the United States often encounters difficulty translating certain global expressions into everyday American speech. The most interesting thing is that often, if these expressions do not have an obvious equivalent, it is because they refer to a concept that does not really exist in French. Or, in any case, that does not have the same status in everyday French language. Therefore, one must find paraphrases or go off into long explanations.

Two examples:

1. “Too big to fail”

There has been much talk of being “too big to fail” since September 2008, the date of the dramatic rescue of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. The expression is often summed up by the abbreviation TBTF.

It refers to the financial or industrial companies whose size and importance to the economic system are such that one cannot seriously imagine letting them die.

One of the objectives of elected Republicans is to abolish the principle of TBTF. The idea is to obligate the directors and stockholders of all companies to accept the law of the market. In theory, this approach is commendable. In practice, it is difficult to implement. Even George W. Bush concluded that General Motors deserved to be saved from liquidation.

Lehman Brothers, on the other hand, was not considered TBTF — and rightly so.

Today in Europe, Greece and Ireland are TBTF. The European authorities are looking for a way to save these countries from default in order to preserve the euro zone’s integrity. They must invent a credible means of covering — by the zone’s virtuous countries — the bad risks taken by the lax countries. Will public opinion accept this transfer of risk for long?

The most serious is the TBTS: in other words, too big to save. This refers to a business so big that one can neither allow it to die, nor save it from catastrophe, because it would be too expensive. Fannie and Freddie were in fact in this category for years. In Europe? In the eyes of Wall Street, it is probably the case for Spain.

2. “Train wreck”

Which brings me to my second example: train wreck. I love this expression, but I had to call on a Parisian expert in order to find an analogy: “Race to the abyss.”

Train wreck means a train accident, generally by derailment. But the expression is pictorial. It describes the more or less slow progression of a convoy toward inevitable catastrophe. We know that in a derailment, crumpled sheet metal and hundreds of victims are inevitable. But we don’t know how to stop the train.

The expression “race to the abyss” takes up the dynamic image of the inevitable sequence that leads to the catastrophe.

In any case, it is the expression frequently used here to talk about the Europeans’ inability to contain the Greek malady’s infectiousness from other zone countries.

If you have ideas on translations or analogies, I am listening and very interested.