riven with dry retching

07:44 Nov 23, 2013 

révulsion au sens figuré s'entend cependant comme répugnance marquée, dégoût

21:32 Nov 22, 2013 

... you need to try to convey the idea of masses of people sticking 2 fingers down their throats to say "Oh that's so GROSS!"

21:20 Nov 22, 2013 

Oui, mais pas un "mouvement de révulsion". Juste "a provoqué la révulsion parmi/du public". Source:http://www.mediadico.com/dictionnaire/definition/revulsion
A noter que la révulsion au sens médical ne me semble pas être liée à l'idée de nausée ou vomissement.

20:54 Nov 22, 2013 

a provoqué un mouvement de révulsion parmi le public..

17:07 Nov 22, 2013 

Et si "hoqueter" pouvait plaire ça peut se simplifier comme ça je pense

12:10 Nov 22, 2013 

I agree with GuillaumeT. That's why I suggested "le coeur au bord des lèvres". Please take a while to check my answer and the reference I posted. I hope this will help.

11:56 Nov 22, 2013 

A literal translation will not work here, so maybe find something around "nausées", as in French it would be the closest thing to actually throwing up.

09:17 Nov 22, 2013 

is hard to render in French, agreed. Perhaps you could simply talk about 'déclencher une explosion( susciter une réaction) de dégoûtou révulsion' (!)

05:44 Nov 22, 2013 

Well, that's a lot of very useful information in one go, and I will try to find something equivalent in French, that would be idiomatique, je ne pense pas qu'on puisse utiliser la même image. Merci Tony!!

21:47 Nov 21, 2013 

I too have never been able to find a satisfactory FR term that covers 'retch' — it is close to 'heave' in EN, and for that, R+C gives the following alternative suggestions:
his stomach was heaving  : son estomac se soulevait
it makes my stomach heave  : ça me dégoûte | ça me rend malade

21:45 Nov 21, 2013 

...means the sort of reflex action of vomiting, without any actual vomit coming out; pretty much the same thing as 'gagging', the reflex you get when you poke something too far down your throat; except that 'dry retching' conveys more clearly the notion of that most unpleasant sound people make when you think they are about to throw up.

Really, your parsing isn't exactly helping, since 'riven' doesn't belong with the retching part: 'the air was riven with the sound of...' is another idiomatic expression, perhaps better handled in a separate question?

The image, of course, is of people doing that popular mimed 'OMG that is sick!' 'fingers-down-the-throat' gesture at the thought of (hitherto-thought-of-as-sexy) David Beckham having had the slightest feelings towards someone like Cherie Blair (undoubtedly perfectly sweet, but not at all at the same level in the D.B. sexy stakes) — and coupling this image with that horrible heaving sound, we have a very strong image of just how revolted people are at the very thought of it.