The y is for “il y a une bonne bagarre”, the compter is “to count on” with the nuance of anticipation, prevoir in french.
Therefore : You should not count on it (on any good bagarre).
Faut pas trop y compter is a shortcut for
Il ne faut pas trop compter là-dessus.
faut is third person of the defective verb falloir.
This translates:
One shouldn’t count too much on it.
or
One shouldn’t rely too much on it.
So two things in your question:
- faut is a standard truncation for il faut, a necessity modality marker; in this context => you shouldn’t
- y compter stands for compter sur ça => count on it
Dropping the impersonal il happens with other verbs:
- faire: fait froid, fait suer, …
- y avoir: y a rien, y a pas photo, …
But not all, with meteo verbs, it’s not common to drop the pronoun:
- il pleut => [iplø] but not [plø]
“Faut pas trop y compter” has a simple correspondence to English:
- “Faut pas” – must not
- “trop” — too much
- “y” — may depend on context but in this case, ‘on it’ or ‘on that’, i.e. “what you just said”
- “compter” — count
So “Must not count on it too much”.
More idiomatically,
- I’d really like a good fight
- “[you or we] Can’t count on that!” or “You’d better not count on that too much”, implying, “That good fight you’re counting on might not happen”
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