Glossary entry

English term or phrase:

give it run for its money.

French translation:

donner du fil à retordre à

Added to glossary by Thierry Darlis
Jul 8, 2017 00:06
6 yrs ago
2 viewers *
English term

give it run for its money.

English to French Bus/Financial General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters colloquial expression
Competition from xxxxx and others will be fierce. But xxxx believes in its chances, given that many of these competitors have been in some kind of transition lately, such as changing owners and leadership or going up-market and not being committed to true mid-market. xxxx will be hard to topple given its deep pockets, good product demos, and the leadership status (à la “you don’t get fired for going xxxx”), but xxxx is ready to put up a good fight and give it run for its money.
Change log

Jul 8, 2017 03:25: writeaway changed "Field" from "Other" to "Bus/Financial" , "Field (write-in)" from "(none)" to "colloquial expression"

Votes to reclassify question as PRO/non-PRO:

Non-PRO (1): Yvonne Gallagher

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Discussion

Tony M Jul 8, 2017:
@ Asker Is it your transcription error, or an actual error in the source text? The expression in EN is normally "give it a run for its money"...

Proposed translations

+4
7 hrs
Selected

donner du fil à retordre à

ou encore
Peer comment(s):

agree Tony M : Not quite the same idiom, but I think this could work well here too.
6 mins
agree Annie Rigler
2 hrs
agree gayd (X)
2 hrs
agree Solen Fillatre : Yes I think this is the closest match so far.
8 hrs
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
4 hrs

lui en faire voir de toutes les couleurs

I am not quite sure this is about "money". I am a little unclear on whether the sentence is mentioning two different companies or not, If so, it would have been clearer to replace "xxx" with Company A and Company B for example.

Anyway, if this is about two companies competing as I suspect, I would suggest "lui en faire voir de toutes les couleurs" (put its competitor through the wringer, basically)
Peer comment(s):

neutral Tony M : Your closing explanation is pretty close, but I don't think the actual idiom is quite right: it means 'to be a worthy opponent (in a race, originally, hence 'run')'
2 hrs
Something went wrong...
+1
7 hrs
English term (edited): give it a run for its money.

ils vont voir à qui ils ont affaire

Almost the exact expression lifted directly from R+C dictionary:

I'll give them a (good) run for their money!  : ils vont voir à qui ils ont affaire!

Note you will need to change the personal pronoun depending on whether you treat 'it' as 'the competing company / product' or as a plural 'they' (the company, collectively).
Peer comment(s):

agree Francois Boye
5 hrs
Merci, François !
Something went wrong...
+1
22 hrs

offrir un (réel) défi à ses concurrents

Tiens, Thierry37 est encore au boulot (Thierry37 is still at work). :-)
--- END PERSONAL MESSAGES ---

Seriously, after "is ready to put up a good fight", you might want to say this, or
"offrir un réel défi à ses concurrents".
This is the shortest path... and that's what it means.

Take care,
H
Peer comment(s):

agree Tony M
1 hr
Something went wrong...
-3
2 hrs

lui en donner pour son argent.

Expression courante

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Note added at 3 hrs (2017-07-08 03:44:58 GMT)
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It's a super known and used expression in France

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Note added at 1 day2 hrs (2017-07-09 02:28:44 GMT)
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I'm having fun with this whole thing
Peer comment(s):

neutral writeaway : any refs to back this? I am not 100% sure this is the correct translation
1 hr
disagree Tony M : I'll go further than W/A and say that I think this is quite the wrong idiom here: 'give him his money's worth'; the sense here is really 'be a worthy opponent'
4 hrs
disagree B D Finch : Nothing to do with the English source term.
12 hrs
disagree Daryo : "super known and used..." Well may be, but is that any proof that it fits for this particular ST? // Sounds to me like a pretty bad case of "translation based on statistics, not meanings"!!! We have GT for that ...
21 hrs
calm down buddy
Something went wrong...
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