Literal translation
how goes it? hobbling along!
Meaning
how are you? so-so!
Explanation
This everyday greeting pairs the ordinary question coume vai (how are you) with the picturesque phrase balin-balan, which originally describes an unsteady, swaying gait, the kind of wobble seen in a badly hung bell or an uncertain step. Answering with balin-balan therefore means standing upright but no more than that, neither well nor badly, the image of imbalance carrying the figurative sense of a middling state. The expression belongs to the ordinary register of daily conversation and is said spontaneously in reply to the customary greeting, without any particular weight: it signals an average day, neither good nor bad. The doubled construction on two similar syllables (balin, balan) is typical of Provençal phrases with an onomatopoeic feel, which imitate through rhythm the very movement they describe. Similar doubled forms recur elsewhere in everyday speech, always to mark a back-and-forth or an in-between state.