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In English it’s common to end a sentence in “...type thing” to summarize a plan or when you don’t want to be specific, kind of as a tag but without saying “it is”.

For example, “I’m gonna get some plates and have an ice cream bar and lots of snacks type thing.”

Or “It’s just really hard to understand, type thing.”

Basically everything before it describes the “type thing”.

Is there a way to translate this in French?

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  • Possibilities include "genre", "comme", "ou quoi que ce soit,.
    – Luke Sawczak
    May 25, 2019 at 3:18
  • @LukeSawczak Mais si tu mets ça complètement à la fin de la phrase ça créé l'approximation selon moi. Peut-être qu'il va falloir reformuler et la technique pourrait employer la comparaison et ça ne viendra pas possiblement pas en fin de phrase... ?
    – user19187
    May 25, 2019 at 3:39
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    @Survenant9r7 Oui, je pensais à mentionner ça. Mais peut-être qu'il faut tout premièrement préciser le sens de « type thing ». Thinking about this phrase, I believe I was wrong to read it as generalizing the case. Rather, it signals familiarity; it invites the other person's acknowledgement that they've encountered this before. If you don't need to specify further, it's because the other person knows what you're talking about. Thus LPH's "c'est ce genre de chose" is nearly there, but the other suggestions, including mine above, don't work. Maybe a new answer can be drafted in light of this?
    – Luke Sawczak
    May 25, 2019 at 14:38

2 Answers 2

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Apparently, this is a shortening of "that type of thing", which is sometimes used in the same way (at the end of a sentence) to express clearly a restriction on the statement, namely that what has been said is merely a particular case of a more general set of related ones that are more or less equally likely candidates.

It seems that the idea conveyed by this expression is much the same (ref). One might wonder whether there is real meaning in all cases of use and if sometimes the utterance is not merely just the result of a bad habit or punctuation as some had rather call it (ref).

Possibilities of translation

  • I’m gonna get some plates and have an ice cream bar and lots of snacks type thing.

Je vais prendre des assiettes et manger une barre de crème glacée et beaucoup de snacks, quelque chose comme ça.

  • It’s just really hard to understand, type thing.

C'est seulement que c'est dur à comprendre, plus ou moins ça.
C'est seulement que c'est dur à comprendre, c'est ce genre de chose.

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LPH answered the question, but I would add the argot for it.

The most common translation would be quelque chose comme ça, or un truc comme ça.

Depending on the region you're in, there's also some other translations. In the east France, you can here genre to refer to that :

Je vais prendre genre des assiettes et manger une barre de crème glacée et beaucoup de snacks

While it's not grammatically correct at all, it is widely used and understood, so I think you should at least be aware of that.

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