Un sale gosse

Just finished what might be my third reading of the story at reference 1, with the second having been six years ago and noticed at reference 2. A tale of dark deeds on a deep sea trawler, of the free-masonry of the sea and of Maigret sorting it all out when the trawler docked. To the point where the inquiry could be dropped - filed in the jargon of the French police of the time - and the various surviving players allowed to get on with their lives.

One of the players who did not survive was the boy on the trawler, not quite cabin-boy, but maybe a sort of apprentice who did all the bits and bobs while he picked up the calling. A boy who is into playing unpleasant tricks, into being a pain and sometimes worse. A boy who is likely to turn out badly. Simenon puts the words 'un sale gosse' into the mouth of one of the players.

Words which I thought captured this particular sort of boy rather well. BH has come across a small number of them in her days of working with infants: boys whom you know, even from the age of five or six, are going to turn out badly. Almost always from a bad home. There is just not enough resource to go round, to pull them round. One, in particular, from Epsom, who did turn out badly. Surfacing fairly recently in the free paper maybe twenty years later, in court for some squalid crime or other. Probably involving drugs.

Linguee, my online dictionary of choice was not, on this occasion, particularly helpful. With the start of its offering snapped above. Deep translation - the red button - did not add anything. Littré not helpful at all. While Larousse has the word, but not this usage.

PS: I remember reading that one of the duties of the apprentice on trawlers out of Hull in the 1960's was chopping up the blocks of ice used to chill the fish. Seemingly a cold and unpleasant task, in some dark hole in the bows of the trawler.

References

Reference 1: Au Rendez-Vous-des-Terres-Neuvas - Georges Simenon - 1931. Volume III of the collected works.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/07/fishing.html.

Reference 3: https://www.linguee.com/english-french/.