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The asker opted for community grading. The question was closed on 2011-05-26 14:54:14 based on peer agreement (or, if there were too few peer comments, asker preference.)
French to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature / sculpture
French term or phrase:quiétude
Le pont, c‘est un symbole – l‘arche entre deux amorces d‘une route.
C‘est la jonction entre le temps présent et le futur,
Entre ce que nous avons et ce que nous désirons avoir peut-être,
Entre la quiétude et l‘incertitude.
What we might have = uncertain (incertitude), but I can't find the opposing "quiétude"?
"Stability" is another rough opp. of uncertainty.
What I don't know is whether the writer - an assumed erudite Czech gentleman - actually wrote this French himself, or whether he lifted it from somewhere.
Can anybody give an opinion please.
"Quietude" has implications of tranquility, while "quietness" is more objective (a distinction we would expect with Romance vs. Germanic endings, though this tendency is not universal).
The double meaning of "still" is exploited by Keats in "thou still unravished bride of quietness"... (Here again, "quietness" is literally the absence of sound: the Grecian urn cannot speak -- but the scene on it is far from quiet: a wild romantic chase, so quietude would not work as well.)
After suggesting "serenity" and reading asker-kashew's comment, "still" suggests itself, with the double-reference to quiet and present. I confess I don't like "quietude" - hardly a word in common English usage, just an archaic, quasi-poetic word for quietness cf OED.
Having thought about your own suggestion, 'resignation' I kind of now understand your problem. Could you not, therefore, just say: Between certainty and uncertainty? Or even satisfaction, assuredness, or any other synonyms.
there are words in French which correspond the answers given to the word quietude. Why change the word then? If the author wanted those other answers, he would simply have found the correspondent in French.
I don't think you need to tie in the "quiétude et l'incertitude" with the having and wanting to have; the text is giving different examples of symbolic bridging - between present and future, between what you have and want to have, and between a tranquil mind and an uncertain mind....I think Jeux de Mots' "tranquillity" would work very well, contrasted with "uncertainty" or "doubt".
Don't think I didn't consider your answers esp tranquility.
Is one necessarily serene and tranquil with what one has? Some have everything, others nothing - but trouble.
Status quo? Resignation? Is that the thing?
There is comparison present v future, have v might have, and this last line quiétude v l‘incertitude. Is that too logical a reading?
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +5