@AlanF_US can we leave this sentence as it is now?

The sentence doesn't make sense, but it has been translated faithfully into other languages, so let's leave it.

Well, it easily makes sense in context, doesn't it. An exasperated utterance at someone who's been droning on how much they have been wronged until it's unbearable to listen to.

> The first of human rights is to shut up!!!

There are various problems with this sentence. To begin with, "the first of human rights" is a little odd. It should really be "the first human right" or "the most important of all human rights".

More importantly, a right focuses on an individual (or group) and what they are allowed to do, or not do, or experience. It makes no sense, for instance, to say "It's my right for a bird to sing." You could say "It's my right to HEAR a bird sing" or even "It's my right to HAVE a bird sing", because then it's about how you are affected, even in a theoretical way (in the latter case, it's as if the bird singing is somehow an extension of you). It's not about the bird's rights. You could say "It's my right to shut up", but that's a bit weird in this context because "shut up" is an order, a coercive phrase. Better would be "It's my right to keep my mouth shut."

But note that even that isn't how you interpreted the sentence. What I think you meant was something like "The first human right is to have people around them shut up." That, in turn is kind of strange because we don't actually want people around us never saying anything. More likely would be something like "The primary human right is to have some peace and quiet once in a while." That at least makes some sense, even if I think it's a little bizarre to decide that that's the primary human right.

Probably some of the problem you mention came up because the French sentence is less easy to translate than what could be thought at first sight.

I don't want to dive into a grammar discussion, but I just wanted to hear your personal opinion about the triple exclamatory. Personally, it gives me the same feeling that people saying "I gave 150% of myself" :) (Not a good one ^^)

PS: I should mention that the joke in French is totally fine, although it doesn't make sense at all (yeah, we're like that).

Think there's a misunderstanding here. What I meant regarding how I interpreted that sentence is a situation when someone is bitching about not getting something s/he thinks he's entitled to (has a right to), until the speaker loses their cool and says this - though I agree "the greatest human right is to shut up" would make a better-sounding sentence - like, "I've had enough of listening to you complaining about lacking rights, what you really have a right to do is to SHUT UP so make use of that right and stop bothering me." Seems like an intuitive interpretation actually. You've probably been above the realities of petty bickering for a long time :p

Regarding !!!, I like having the option of adding extra exclamation points if I feel like it, though I think it should be used sparingly to signify an extremely strong emotion or display; in this case, "!!!" suggests a legit yell.

In that case, the speaker is inverting the meaning of "right". It's like saying "You have a right to cook breakfast, and I want you to do it for me right now!" Sure, you can do that on a one-off basis, just like you can make a word behave as though it were a diffferent part of speech ("But Mom!" "Don't you 'Mom' me!"). However, if you really want to demonstrate that kind of anomalous word-play, a longer sentence, or dialogue, is a better way to go, at least in English.

I generally avoid even single exclamation marks at Tatoeba altogether, but the use of single or multiple exclamation marks is something I leave to personal preference.