J'avais bien entendu parler de ce nouveau poste, again

Question

I also was confounded about this. Seeing that "bien entendu" usually means of "course", I also thought that parler should have been a participle, which would yield the translation "I had of course talked about this new position". But as I understand "bien entendu" in this case does not translate to "of course" and that "entendu" should be seen in conjuction with "parler" and not as part of the idiomatic expression "bien entendu". Do I make any sense?

Cécile Janty-Davies · Accepted Answer

Bonjour S.B.,
I think you have misread the sentence:
The expression is -
entendre parler de quelque chose = to hear of/about something 
So this person had  indeed heard of this new job 
and the 'bien' reinforces the meaning with 'indeed'.
There is another similar expression ' entendre dire que'
To hear that 
J'avais bien entendu dire qu'il y aurait un nouveau poste... = I had heard ( it said) that there would be a new position
Take a look at the following lesson from our partner Laura for lots more examples -
https://www.lawlessfrench.com/expressions/entendre-dire-exp/
Hope this helps!

Cécile Janty-Davies · Answer

Rebonjour S.B.,
If you had wanted to say 'I had of course heard of that new position,' you would have to use 'bien sûr' and not 'bien entendu,' as otherwise you would have to repeat 'entendu' twice, which is considered inelegant -
 
J'avais bien sûr entendu parler de ce nouveau poste
and not 
J'avais bien entendu, entendu parler de ce nouveau poste
Bonne Continuation !

Maarten Kamp · Answer

Cécile,

I think your first post covered the probable source of the confusion - needing to know the important French expression ‘ entendre parler de qqc‘.

Of course, we can say something similar in English ‘ heard talk of/about .. ‘ but often just use ‘ heard of/about ‘, a shortcut French doesn’t use.

Interestingly your additional response matches closely the discussion I had with my local expert !

“ J'avais bien entendu entendu parler de ce nouveau poste “ Grammatically correct - possibly. But something a native speaker would say - never ( or as close to as it can ever be ).