Traduko - Rumana-Angla - A da cu bâta în baltă. A se îneca ca ţiganul la...

Iepurica, thanks for your response, although I don't know why you didn't write it here so everyone could see it. "To lose by a neck (or a nose)" is to lose a competition by a very close margin.

"The straw that broke the camel's back" means the last of many negative things, the sum of which pushed the situation over the edge.

If, as you said, this one would be literally translated as "to draw oneself like a gypsy to the shore" and "means that you give up exactly before you almost manage to achieve something after a lot of effort and struggle", then I don't think either one of those translations is correct.

I can't think of an expression in English that means that, though, so maybe we would need to just do a straight translation, such as yours above. But I will ask Ian - maybe he can think of an expression.

CC: IanMegill2 Tantine

Yup, I think I understand the idea, anyway: you knock yourself out trying to achieve something, and then go and give up just as you were about to finally succeed!
However, I don't think we have any common expression for that...
Hmmm...I'll keep thinking about it, and if I come up with anything, I'll get back to you...

How about simply "to not quite make it"?

Yeah, but that would be just a simple translation, I thought it exist a correspondence in English. But if you guys say there is not, I guess half of the translation is correct.

Half of it corresponds to the original text in Romnian (see kafetzou and IanMegill2 comentaries). According to what they have explained, the second half is not correct.