This site uses cookies. Some of these cookies are essential to the operation of the site, while others help to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used. For more information, please see the ProZ.com privacy policy.
Cookie settings
mis en cause et reconnu fautif
de tour de multiple

Glossary entry

French term or phrase:

fauchage des vaches (Democratic Republic of the Congo)

English translation:

cattle stealing/rustling OR killing OR translator's note (see question, full context not available, complex question)

Added to glossary by Conor McAuley
    The asker opted for community grading. The question was closed on 2021-04-02 19:54:16 based on peer agreement (or, if there were too few peer comments, asker preference.)
Mar 29, 2021 19:56
3 yrs ago
49 viewers *
French term

Fauchage des vaches

French to English Other Government / Politics Humanitarian aid context - attacks on civilians in conflict situation (DRC)
This is part of a presentation from the Democratic Republic of Congo outlining an example of work carried out by a humanitarian organisation working on civilian protection. I have set out the section below. I'm guessing that this "fauchage des vaches" / "vaches fauchés" refers to slaughtering or maiming cattle (I see some medical references for fauchage linked to gait?) I've just never heard of it in this kind of context so wondering if anyone can confirm. TIA!

"Le Fauchage des vaches a exacerbé la situation sécuritaire dans les fermes environnant l’agglomération de Katale. Plus de 200 vaches ont été fauchées dans une période de deux ans. Après des analyses des faits par les membres du NPD Tunda, deux hypothèses ont convergé vers les causes de fauchages à savoir :

Le règlement des comptes par les anciens occupants des terres sur lesquelles les fermes sont entretenues avant l’acquisition des titres par les nouveaux acquéreurs et propriétaires desdites fermes ;

Le non accès à la terre par les populations riveraines de fermes dont l’agriculture occupe plus de 90% de leurs occupations et source des revenus.

Après ces analyses, les membres du NPD ont entamé une série d’activités de plaidoyer et de négociation avec les propriétaires des fermes afin de les convaincre pour qu’ils puissent faciliter l’accès à la terre aux populations nécessiteuses et riveraines de leurs concessions.

Au total six assises avec les concessionnaires précédées par plusieurs contacts individuels ont été organisées par le NPD au cours de l’année 2020.

Résultat de ces assises :
Grâce à ces assises les concessionnaires ont dans l’ensemble accepté de rendre disponible 183 hectares qui sont cultivés par la population selon des conventions de métayage. En somme, 122 cultivateurs dont 48 femmes ont eu l’accès à la terre grâce aux négociations faites par les membres de NPD Tunda avec les concessionnaires."
Proposed translations (English)
4 +2 cattle stealing / rustling
3 +2 cattle looting
4 Cattle killing
Change log

Apr 2, 2021 21:51: Conor McAuley Created KOG entry

Discussion

Conor McAuley Apr 1, 2021:
Well, absolutely, you can't control the way people use language, and that is mostly a good thing.

In France, for a period, the State tried to eliminate regional languages, in a nation-building effort. Now (under EU influence) it encourages Breton, Basque, but not so much the parlers and so on.
In my region (Burgundy), most people could guess at what "petiot" and "petiotte" mean, but "truffe" (Morvan)?
Wolf Draeger Apr 1, 2021:
Variants of French You can be sure that with a language as widely spoken as French there will be all kinds of regional and national variants (as is the case with English, Spanish, Arabic); and in a country as vast as the DRC there may very well be several variations of a variant; so I wouldn't be surprised if faucher/fauchage is used in a nonstandard or at least unusual way here.

I think we have to look past the dictionary def. and examine how it's used in context.
Conor McAuley Mar 31, 2021:
To Yvonne What, not even my link to Garda.com convinced you? (Joke.)
Conor McAuley Mar 31, 2021:
Blind alley into Belgian French and... ...non-standard use of "Fauchage", especially with a capital F

Apparently what is now the DRC adopted Parisian French, despite being a Belgian colony for decades.

"Cette conscience collective du refus de la Belgique d’ouvrir sa colonie au monde extérieur justifie, semble-t-il, l’adoption par les Congolais de la RDC du français parisien."

https://journals.openedition.org/dhfles/441

That still doesn't rule out non-standard usage though, a meaning peculiar to French (DRC).


Some meanings around the verb "faucher":

- "fauché par une voiture" - run down/over by a car / "mown down by"
- ""la Faucheuse", the Grim Reaper < fauché par la mort, a little bit literary
- "faucher du blé" avoine, etc. - to cut corn, oats, etc.

It's still a 50-50 call, for me.

It could even mean mown down and killed (two every week on average, over a period of two years, with an easy getaway).


So I think you have to resort to a translator's note, explaining that "fauchage" has two basic meanings, and there's no way of knowing which one applies here.
If you have no specific context, there's nothing else to be done.
Yvonne Gallagher Mar 31, 2021:
@ Asker I agree with Wolf. From the context I think maim or hurt the cattle would be far more likely as a way of showing their anger towards the farmers. So looting or any of its synonyms is probably wrong here
Wolf Draeger Mar 30, 2021:
Based on the context I'm actually leaning towards "maiming" or "crippling" rather than looting. Here's why:
- 200 cattle in 2 years is not a large amount if we're talking raiding or rustling
- the belligerents are not after cattle per se but access to farmland
- where will the supposed thieves keep their cattle if they don't have any land?
- the resolution of the confict mentions nothing about keeping or returning stolen cattle
- score settling suggests animosity rather than profit as a motive

It all sounds very local, see https://www.facebook.com/Noyau-de-paix-et-développement-1051... for what appears to be NPD Tunda.

Plus correct me if I'm wrong, but faucher in the less frequent sense of "steal" rather means pinch or nick than raid or loot. But I think the context is everything here.
Conor McAuley Mar 30, 2021:
Looting is a word that is employed for stealing during wartime (civil war or otherwise), or say, during riots/civil unrest (for example in the USA last year), granted.

But the situation described in the question seems to be relatively stable and the stealing not politically based, strictly speaking.

So I believe that "hustling" is the correct word if you want to say "stealing", basically.
Sarah Day (asker) Mar 30, 2021:
This is all the information I have on this particular country example - it's one of a series of examples from different countries and organisations and it deals with ongoing projects so I'm guessing it's fairly recent. I agree that looting is the most probable meaning in this context. I'm going to point out the ambiguity to my client. Thank you everyone for taking the time to help me with this!
Conor McAuley Mar 29, 2021:
Problem is... ...the basic meaning of "faucher" leaves two options open: kill or steal.

https://www.wordreference.com/fren/faucher

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Congos-provinces-before-...
Katale is in Nord-Kivu, which is in eastern DRC.

https://www.garda.com/fr/crisis24/alertes-de-securite/387536...
So these facts do correspond. Do you have any kind of timeline, period or even date?
"The government's ***limited presence in the DRC's eastern provinces***, as well as the presence of numerous armed groups and local self-defense militias, has led to continued insecurity in the region."

So, based on what I can find, I would say "stolen" for the moment.

Proposed translations

+2
23 hrs
Selected

cattle stealing / rustling

The term "cattle looting" struck me as uncolloquial, but I initially decided to let it go because it had got three Likes.

Eventually though, I couldn't resist running the stats:

"cattle looting" + africa
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q="cattle looting" africa &s...

2,000


"cattle stealing" + africa

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q="cattle stealing" africa&e...

86,000


I think pirates, rioters and Vikings loot.


Castle rustling, if you want a term with a bit more flavour, is good I think.

https://enactafrica.org/enact-observer/cattle-rustling-on-th...

"Cattle rustling is becoming increasingly violent and transnational, and requires more coordinated regional responses.
Cattle rustling in Africa has, in recent years, grown both in scale and violence and is increasingly linked to organised criminal and terrorist groups as a source of income. The crime is also transnational in that cattle are ***moved across borders***. This means that increased regional cooperation is required if this crime is to be addressed."

"moved across borders": I think Rwanda is next door to the place mentioned in the text.


--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 23 hrs (2021-03-30 19:24:58 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

"cattle rustling" + africa

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q="cattle rustling" africa&e...

319,000 matches


I still think that -- without knowing the French variant spoken by the author, or any more specific context, it's still a 50-50 call -- but, if you're going to go for "stealing" basically, the term required is rustling I think.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 23 hrs (2021-03-30 19:30:36 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Apologies for the misplaced long dash above -- should be in front of "it's still...".



--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 day 12 hrs (2021-03-31 08:27:49 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

https://www.garda.com/fr/crisis24/alertes-de-securite/387536...

"Event
Two civilians were killed, one other kidnapped, and over three hundred cattle stolen..."

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 day 21 hrs (2021-03-31 17:38:58 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

(See full post in the Discussion)

So I think you have to resort to a translator's note, explaining that "fauchage" has two basic meanings, and that there's no way of knowing which one applies here.

If you have no specific context, there's nothing else to be done.
Peer comment(s):
agree ph-b (X)
10 hrs
Thanks ph-b!
agree Lucy Teasdale : Sounds good to me
1 day 19 hrs
Thanks Lucy!
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Selected automatically based on peer agreement."
+2
36 mins

cattle looting

cattle, or cows
cattle-looting is an important source of income for armed groups (for examples from South Sudan and Nigeria, see here and here). But cattle are more than ‘conflict resources,’ or a means to finance war; the tensions resulting from transhumance, or seasonal movements of cattle, often fuel wider conflict dynamics.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 38 mins (2021-03-29 20:34:55 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

From Larousse: Populaire. Voler, prendre quelque chose à quelqu'un ; barboter : On m'a fauché mon portefeuille.
Example sentence:

eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The massacre occurred in the wake of clashes between the army and two armed groups – the standoff was sparked by a bout of cattle-looting. While the killings were not directly related to the looting,

Reference:

http://https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2017/02/16/judith/

Peer comment(s):
agree philgoddard : It can also mean killing, but I think they'd be more likely to steal them. http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/faucher/33004
11 mins
agree ormiston : Have also found to poach, as here: Poachers target cows in News / South Africa by Bobby Jordan
10 hrs
agree ph-b (X) : Very likely, although fauchage is unusual in this type of text as this word is rather colloquial. Vol de bétail is more common.
11 hrs
disagree Conor McAuley : See stats , plus reasoning stylistically. Poaching is used for big game. / Stealing v killing is a 50-50 bet to begin with, so if you start narrowing the meaning of stealing to looting = conflict situations only... Interested in accuracy, not points.
1 day 11 hrs
Your suggestions are OK but it hardly means 'looting' is wrong enough to disagree. Is it because you want to win points that badly?
neutral Yvonne Gallagher : I think this is probably wrong but won't disagree
1 day 18 hrs
Something went wrong...
12 hrs

Cattle killing

Because revenge has been cited as a factor for this phenomenon, I think 'killing' is the more likely translation.

See...:

http://thepatriot.in/2020/09/04/revenge-of-the-villagers/
Peer comment(s):
neutral ph-b (X) : Don't understand the relevance of your quote, and cattle is worth too much to be killed. Looting is far more likely and faucher can mean "steal".
21 mins
neutral Wolf Draeger : I would agree but for your inadequate explanation and irrelevant ref.
1 day 16 hrs
Something went wrong...
Close search
Term search
  • All of ProZ.com
  • Term search
  • Jobs
  • Forums
  • Multiple search