fiddle while Rome burns

Meaning: (idiomatic)To neglect helping when one’s time is needed most; to ignore the major problem at hand (whilst doing something less important); to be idle, inactive, or uninterested in a time of great need.

Examples:

EN: Is this how I raised you? To fiddle while Rome burns?
ES: ¿Os enseñé a hacer el memo mientras se acaba el mundo?
EN: A government that chooses to play the fiddle while Rome burns.
HI: रोम को जला वंशी बजाने पर उतारु सरकार
EN: To fiddle while Rome burns?
ID: Mengurusi hal remeh di saat genting?

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).