联邦铁路局traduire一个表达式ncaise

[StrangeCaptain]

Francais:

Bonjour à tous,

Je voudrais demander une petite question aux gens bilingues francais/anglais. J'essaye de comprendre une expression francaise dans un livre que je lis. C'est "The Collapse of The Third Republic" par William Shirer. La question est sur des paroles de Charles de Gaulle en décrivant Marshall Pétain vers la fin de la bataille de France lors de la 2ème guerre mondiale. De Pétain, il a dit,

"too proud to intrigue, too strong for mediocrity, too ambitious to be arriviste"

J'ai cherché des dictionnaires et la traduction de "arriviste" est donnée comme "social climber" mais "ambitious" décrit bien "social climber." Pourriez-vous me dire le sens de "arriviste" dans cette phrase?

English:

Hello everybody,

I would like to ask a question to all of you bilingual English/French speakers about a French expression in a book I am reading: "The Collapse of The Third Republic" by William Shirer. The question is about a word Charles de Gaulle uses while describing Marshall Pétain near the end of the battle of France during WW2. He describes Pétain as,

"too proud to intrigue, too strong for mediocrity, too ambitious to be arriviste"

I looked in dictionaries and they tended to describe an "arriviste" as a "social climber," but isn't ambitious exactly what a social climber is? Is some other meaning meant here for "arriviste" that explains why being too ambitious excludes him from being an "arriviste." Could it mean that he refuses to be subordinate to another?

[mkrnhr]

Hello Patience,
"arriviste" in French is a pejorative term for someone who wants to arrive to a social position by any means possible. Maybe he wants to draw a difference between doing so in honorable means and in non-honorable means. In this case it can be related to "intrigue" IMHO.

[StrangeCaptain]

Okay... I don't quite get it still, but what you say makes sense in the context in which these words were said. De Gaulle says they were his thoughts as he was driving to Brittany to eventually go to Algeria with the thoughts of continuing the war from there as the battle for France had already been lost. The high chief of the French military, General Weygand, was pushing for an armistice with Germany and secretly gathering supporters to his cause against the Premier Reynaud who was still publicly stating his resistance to an armistice. Pétain was also in favor of an armistice. He had a position in the military's high command, and for Weygand, having Pétain with him lent legitimacy to his views as Pétain was a famous WW1 hero.

Pétain was famous as championing strategies and tactics in WW1 that reduced the callous bloodshed of the infantry. It suddenly occurs to me that his reputation of caring about the common man would give Weygand's push for armistice a legitimate appearance of being about saving France from useless destruction. Maybe De Gaulle was sort of indirectly referring to Pétain as the pawn that lent Weygand legitimacy while helping keep Weygand's own motives hidden. Pétain seems like exactly the kind of man who could be almost endlessly manipulated by power-hungry pathologicals.

Anyway... Thanks... You definitely helped me think about this quote in a different way.

[Esote]

Bonjour Patience

In my understanding, there is a complementary meaning for "arriviste", which is somebody who likes to show how wealthy he is, regardless of the perverse means he uses.

总之,mkrnhr表明,应该意味着体育tain was too ambitious to take the risk to use perverse means in order to get to the highest social position.
And too proud, too strong to be mean...

[Palinurus]

My Bing translator gives as meaning: (young) upstart. So maybe it just means he was too ambitious to start on the lowest rung of the ladder?

[Maat]

As a french, I will second mkrnhr here, this "too ambitious to be arriviste" is sustained by "too proud to intrigue" because an arriviste will intrigue by any means necessary to attain his goal

My dictionnary says "careerist" with pejorative emphasis for translation of "arriviste"

edit : "arrivist" comes from the verb "arriver" that is to get to, gain, obtain something, be successful...

I hope it makes it clearer....