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05:35 Oct 26, 2010
This question was closed without grading. Reason: Answer found elsewhere
French to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Journalism
French term or phrase:balluchon à bretelles
This is from a farewell article by a webmaster leaving his post.
... et c’est pour un long voyage vers des contrées inconnues (de moi) que je reprends mon balluchon à bretelles...
I've found baluchon and bretelles separately but not together as an expression. Does it just mean something like "travelling bag" or "rucksack"?
To clarify I think the idea here is the act of slinging something over your shoulder (bretelle can mean a way a gun is held over the shoulder) as in piano à bretelles (accordion) as Bourth pointed out.
i.e. I'm picking up my backpack / rucksack and slinging it over my shoulder.
... but in the UK I've heard "knotted handkerchief on a stick" used quite often in similar contexts, especially when a certain level of humour or self-deprecation is intended. Not very elegant, but it keeps the traditional fairy-tale image of the resourceful lad setting out to seek his fortune, widowed mother dabbing eyes with apron at the cottage door, etc.
Explanation: This is what springs to my mind; the term is not very well-known however, hence medium-only confidence level.
"Bindle (from German das Bündel = bundle, bale) is a term used to describe the bag, sack, or carrying device stereotypically used by the commonly American sub-culture of hobos. The person carrying a bindle was called a bindlestiff, combining bindle with the Average Joe sense of stiff.
In popular culture the bindle is portrayed as a stick with cloth or a blanket tied around one end for carrying items, with the entire array being carried over the shoulder. Particularly in cartoons, the bindles' sacks usually have a polka-dotted or bandanna design. However, in actual use the bindle can take many forms.
An example of the stick-type bindle can be seen in the illustration entitled The Runaway created by Norman Rockwell which appears on the cover of the September 20, 1958 edition of The Saturday Evening Post.
Though bindles are rarely used anymore, they are still widely seen in popular culture as a prevalent anachronism". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bindle
"Cormac McCarthy in The Road "lastly he made a bindle in a plastic tarp of some cans of juice and cans of fruit and cans of vegetables... " "
Explanation: "Rucksack" surprised me, coming from NZ, but I see you're not a native. Down there we say "backpack" or just "pack".
Baluchon sums up the fairytale notion of "setting out to seek one's fortune": that is the picture we all have of the cloth containing all one's worldly goods attached to the end of a stick held gaily over the shoulder as one sets out. However baluchon is a thing of the past. As an accordion is a piano à bretelles, so a rucksack/backpack is a baluchon à bretelles.
Personally I don't know an English equivalent for baluchon, so I would rephrase. It might be possible to use the "fairytale" expression "all his worldly goods", but I suspect that doesn't apply here. He's off on an adventure, but only for the short term. The other fairytale expression that could be worked in is "to seek my fortune" - "fortune" being adventure, discovery of those unknown places, quite simply.
I threw some essentials into a backpack and set off to seek my fortune.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 3 hrs (2010-10-26 09:16:55 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
It takes all sorts to make a world: I'm a UK native, lived in NZ for the first 24 - but one - of my life. Are you sick of the aftershocks yet? (I grew up in ChCh).
xxxBourth Local time: 20:33 Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 36
Notes to answerer
Asker: I am a NZ native but I used to live in NZ hence my use of the word "rucksack" :)
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +2
