Allez France!
20Jun10
I looked up “teamwork” in my largest French dictionary. The only translation is “travail d’équipe”, which really means “work done by a team”.
The French don’t have a word for “teamwork” in the sense that we use it, as ‘purposeful collaboration towards a common goal’. This explains a lot.
“Collaboration” is also a tricky word to use in France.
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Up to now it doesn’t look much like England are carrying out a ‘purposeful collaboration towards a common goal’ either 🙂
You’ll be impressed to hear that I got France in the office sweepstake, so I cheered their single common goal as I waved goodbye to my winnings and Nicolas Anelka.
We could be in for an interesting holiday next week depending on how England do tomorrow.
Leaving football aside, I think you may have been in an interesting meeting we had a couple of weeks ago with the CEO of the French business. Teamwork is definitely not part of his vocabulary and collaboration is not an option at all. However he did take the time to end our fruitless hour-long meeting with a five-minute lesson from history, explaining why the French revolution has made the French people (and their rights) different from anyone else in the world.
Haha 🙂
And I think that reminiscing about 1966 is a bit OTT. Never mind reminiscing about 1792…
Try quoting the Magna Carta at the next meeting. The Normans were French after all.
Damn – he pre-empted us – I think he mentioned Magna Carta too.