“No-brainer” as a noun in French

Question

There are several ways of translating into French the idea conveyed by “no-brainer”, as in:

It seems like a no-brainer to improve standards.

• Améliorer les standards ? Ça va de soi or Poser la question, c’est y répondre.
• Ça semble une évidence que l’on doive monter la barre.
• Ce n’est que normal que l’on fasse progresser les normes.

While the second translation I propose does transform the noun into a noun, “évidence” is not always the most appropriate translation:

“How should I approach this stability problem?”
“That's a no brainer, use a dovetail.”

  « Comment devrais-je assurer la stabilité du montage ?

• Ne te pose pas de questions, utilise une queue d’aronde !
• Le mieux, et de loin, sera une queue d’aronde.

I feel the use of “évidence” in this case would be too condescending, because “évidence” has more of an absolute value than “no brainer”, the latter allowing for person-specific experience and knowledge.

Would there be, then, beside “évidence”, another noun that could cover in a gentler manner the idea of “no brainer”?

Answer 1

Personally I'd find «c'est facile» just as condescending as «évident», and the latter a reasonable translation for “no-brainer”.

That said, a couple or three other suggestions:

• Start with évidemment, because it draws the listener in and says “you’ve already realised that ...” rather than “it should be obvious that ...”
• A bit of searching led me to «Ça coule de source» and «Ce n'est pas compliqué». The former is quite a figurative phrase, which compliments the listener; the latter is un peu dur).
• Obviously if you wish to avoid condescension, avoid beginning with «Franchement, je crois que la question ne doit pas se poser...» :o)

Answer 2

If your desire to express this concept with a noun would be satisfied by declaring the absence of an antonym/near antonym of that noun, maybe you could consider using that strategy, perhaps as follows:

Granted, there’s technically a gap in meaning between “not being something [e.g., a brain-teaser/twister] and actually “being the near opposite of that thing [e.g., a no-brainer], but it’s possible that the nuance caused by this very gap could actually present an opportunity to soften a bit the notion of “It’s a no-brainer” by replacing it with “It’s not a brain teaser,” ...
... first in English (for I, in spite of your observation, often hear/see “no-brainer” used condescendingly in that language, too) ...
... and then in French to slightly temper the condescending tone of ...
... “C’est/Ça semble une evidence que …” with, for example:

Ce n'est pas un mystère {que …}.

(usage example, possibly relevant, from Journal des débats, Volume 28, Issues 41-65 L'Assemblée, 1985 - Québec (Province), via GoogleBooks).

---

If, however, the nuance/gap between something “not being un mystère” and its “being une evidence” is either too great (i.e., "sorry, but that’s just not what it means") or ...
... too slight (i.e., "sorry, but it’s still too condescending"), ...
... then perhaps you could consider a literal translation of “It’s not a brain-teaser/twister,” such as:

C{e n}’est pas un casse-tête [chinois].

(from Reverso-Context).
(but please note that this, too, might be seen as failing to help you reach your admirable goal of avoiding all traces of condescension [and some might even see it as being worse than the original in that respect])

(see also Cath S’s suggestion on this Word Reference thread on “a no-brainer”)

Answer 3

I think the best would simply be to use the concept of "simplicité" or "facilité".

Comment devrais-je assurer la stabilité du montage ?

• C'est simple, utilise une queue d'aronde !
• C'est facile, utilise une queue d'aronde !

Answer 4

Une proposition de néologisme aux allures de calque morphologique pourrait-on dire mais entièrement français vu qu'elle représente la substantivation de la locution adverbiale sans effort (facilement) :

Un sans-effort [ Wiktionnaire fr. no-brainer, Termium dans un contexte spécialisé (l'entente) ]

Une formalité d'une certaine manière, l'acte sans difficulté (TLFi A 2 b). Plus généralement on préfère ça va de soi et la facilité selon le contexte, tel que mentionné ailleurs... mais c'est un nom !