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I'm translating some colloquial English sentences into French:

L'heure / Le temps / Le moment n'est pas au farniente, mais le client, comme qui dirait, ayant toujours raison, si tu veux te reposer un peu, qui suis-je pour t’en empêcher ?

... and I wonder if "l'heure n'est pas au farniente" belongs to the same register as the original English phrasing "this is no time to slack off"?

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  • "L'heure n'est pas au farniente" is the best proposal.
  • "Le moment n'est pas au farniente" is acceptable
  • "Le temps n'est pas au farniente" is weird, because, it sounds like "The weather is no time to slack off"

The more fluent sentence (maybe spoken french) would be: Ce n'est pas le moment de se laisser aller, mais comme on dit : "le client est roi", alors si tu veux te reposer, vas-y !

For a more formal translation, I need the complete original sentence.

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    Yes, your rephrasing sounds better. Farniente is slightly literary, not colloquial as I guess slack-off is.
    – jlliagre
    Dec 25, 2017 at 20:33
  • @jlliagre The original English sentences come from dialogues in a novel. Do you still think Farniente is a bit too literary? I wanted to give them some flavour.
    – Con-gras-tue-les-chiens
    Dec 26, 2017 at 8:45
  • Yes, farniente is "sophisticated" spoken French.
    – jlliagre
    Dec 26, 2017 at 9:25

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