English to French translation

Til the cows come home

August 22, 2007

Relatively modern amplifications of this one include "till the cows come home in the morning" and "till hell freezes over and the cows come skating home over the ice". The expression has meant "a long, long time" for a long, long time, since about 1600, and the idea behind it is that cows take their own good time about coming home if they aren’t driven, often until the next morning when, with udders painfully swolen, they come home to be milked.

Robert Hendrickson, The encyclopedia of word and phrase origins

Among the French equivalents I found following a quick research in my dictionaries and on the Internet: jusqu’à la Saint-Glinglin (until Saint Glinglin’s day), jusqu’à perpète (until perpetuity), jusqu’à la semaine des quatre jeudis (until the 4-Thursday week), quand les poules auront les dents (when chickens have teeth). However, I’m not sure they are absolutely appropriate. While the simplest translation for "til the cows come home" would be "for a long time", these French expressions mean "forever". In fact, "till hell freezes over and the cows come skating home over the ice" (which isn't about to happen) seems to me to corrupt the original meaning of the "til the cows come home" (which will happen, sooner or later). Any thoughts?

Comments

I love this picture - it's so mooving

Groucho to Margaret Dumont in "Duck Soup", 1933:

I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thoughts I'd rather dance with the cows and you come home.

There's a lovely phrase for this in Portuguese - No dia de São Nunca - On the day of Saint Never!

David's Portuguese solution has a German counterpart, too: "Bis zum Sankt Nimmerleinstag" (until Sant Never's day).
But as Céline points out, this does not capture the possibility that the cows might eventually come home after all. No ideas on that one yet.

On my grandfather's cattle ranch, the cows would immediately come whenever they saw anyone going to the barn. They were expecting feed.

The cows were large, but very gentle. However, it did take some getting use to being surrounded by about 100 of them. (The bulls were different; even larger and very agressive. One did not want to walk in their pasture.)

Speaking of quadrupeds and long periods of time, in Italian we say: "campa cavallo ché l'erba cresce" ("keep on living, horse: the grass is growing"). It means "for a long, long time", but in a kind of negative acception, and it is usually abbreviated to "campa cavallo". An example of conversation:
- You paid more than you had to, but the government will send you a tax refund check.
- Yeah, sure, campa cavallo.
And reading the comments above I found out that St. Never is worshipped in several parts of Europe. "Al dì ad San Mai" (the day of St. Never) is a typical idiom in Emilian, my native dialect.

In Portuguese (here in Brazil, at least), besides waiting for Saint Never's Day we also tell people to wait "until there's a rain of knives".

It's also common to say:
"- E aquele livro novo seu, quando vai me emprestar?
- No dia de São Nunca, de tarde!"

"- When will you lend me that new book of yours?
- On Saint Never's Day, in the afternoon!"

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