)It is not absolutely always the case, but it often is, that information that helps to interpret (and then to translate) the beginning of a passage can be found further on. It is thus always useful to read the whole passage before even putting anything on paper, as a false start, or a start in the wrong direction can be far more time-consuming than it is worth. This idea is not new (and there are other rules of translating worth thinking about): look here for proof.
Back to Contents
Narratives, almost by their nature, include a point of view; at one point several years ago, there was quite a lively critical debate about the connection between the speaking voice in a literary narrative and the point of view, i.e., the position from which events are perceived. It is hardly necessary to enter into that debate to realize that point of view is important for translation: the mental image the reader forms of events is inevitably shaped by the translator's choice of terms. Some choices involve very common, even simple, vocabulary; "come" and "go" are good examples. There is a substantial difference between
- Jane went into the room.
and
- Jane came into the room.
The mental image the first sentence produces situates the point of view outside the room, and Jane moving away from the observer, which the second situates the observer inside the room, with Jane approaching.
Back to Contents
One of the characteristic features of English is the importance of prepositions and adverbial particles. Phrasal verbs provide innumerable examples: "get up [in the morning]" vs "get down [from a tree]", etc., etc. Another example is the importance of prepositions and particles associated with verbs of movement, notably "come" and "go". "Come" in the sense of "move toward the speaker" may in some cases be associated with "in" (e.g., "Upon hearing a knock at the door, he called out, 'Come in!'"). However, there are many cases in which a poorly chosen preposition may very considerably change the meaning of the sentence: "come" sometimes has the meaning of "experience intense sexual pleasure"; depending perhaps to some extent on context, there is at least potentially a substantial difference between
- Jane came into the room.
and
- Jane came in the room.
Similarly, "go" often has the meaning of "move away from the speaker" (e.g., "I saw him in the street, but I lost sight of him when he went into a shop.") However, "go" also sometimes means "urinate" or even "defecate". There is thus at least potentially a substantial difference between
- John went into the room.
and
- John went in the room.
There are of course contexts in which no ambiguity arises; students should nevertheless be aware of potential ambiguities in order to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings...
Back to Contents
Back to Contents
Back to Contents
One frequently occurring grammatical structure in English is the so-called "double-transitive" [not an academically recognized term, but one that provides a convenient short-cut], in which a verb which refers to some kind of transmission is followed by two nominal groups, the first being the indirect object (recipient of the transmission) and the second the direct object (that which is transmitted) without any preposition to indicate the respective statuses of the two. A typical example might be "John gave Harriet a book", in which Harriet is the recipient, and the book is what she receives.
The structure is often used with common verbs, and is unquestionably part of the English speaker's grammatical repertoire. As such, students are encouraged to use it, but they should take care to use it only when appropriate: the double-transitive carries with it an unmistakable air of authenticity, but cannot be used with all the verbs that refer to transmission.
| Some verbs that can be used with the "double-transitive" | Some verbs that CANNOT be used with the "double-transitive" |
|---|---|
|
|
|
|
Many more examples can be found, for example in
Larreya, Paul, and Claude Rivière. Grammaire Explicative de L’anglais. Paris: Pearson Education France. 2005. Or Ogée, Frederick, and Paul Boucher. Grammaire Appliquée de L’anglais. Paris: SEDES. 1990. |
|
There are also a few curious and unusual examples, such as "cry me a river"...
Back to Contents
"On" is sometimes a slippery pronoun to translate; as is the case with many words and passages, it is often useful to "translate" the passage in question into French, in order to determine exactly what is meant by "on". Translations may include "we", "they", "you", "one" or the passive structure, depending on the context.
Examples
Back to Contents
The English verb "offer" is not used in exactly the same way as the French "offrir"; in particular, whereas in French "offrir un cadeau" is nearly synonymous with "faire un cadeau", in English "offer" "propose / make available", but does not imply that the offer has been accepted.
Examples
Back to Contents
"Remember", "recall", "recollect" and "remind" all have to do with mental images and reconstructions of the past, but are not synonyms and are not constructed in the same way.
Examples
Back to Contents
In English typography, italic characters are used for the titles of works that occupy an entire volume (books) or are otherwise intependent (films, records, etc.). (In handwriting, italics are replaced by underlining.) Titles of works which are part of a volume (a chapter or section, an article in a collection of articles, a short story, etc.) are placed inside "quotation marks" (often called "inverted commas" in British English, in reference to the shape of the marks in print: “ ”).
Back to Contents
Capital letters are used somewhat differently in English from the way they are in French.
Back to Contents
Several points are worth making about the use of quotation marks in English, especially as usage rules are stricter than they often appear to be in French. As a general rule, quotation marks are used to set off words that the writer (or narrator in a work of fiction) identifies as being those of another, not him/herself.
| J'ai croisé mon copain Jean l'autre jour. | I ran into my pal John the other day. | ||
| « Salut, dit-il. Ça va? | "Hi," he said. "How's it going?" | (NB the quoting tag 'he said', being the narrator's words, is not included in the quotation marks, but the question mark, which is part of the 'character's' question, is) | |
| — Ça va ; et toi? | "OK; how about you?" | (Although the text in French uses a dash to introduce the second character's speech, the text in English uses quotation marks.) | |
| — Ça va. Bon, à bientôt! » | "I'm fine. Right; I'll see you around!" | (In French, the end of the dialogue is marked by the 'closing guillemet'; in English, the beginning as well as the end of the character's speech is marked by quotation marks.) |
Back to Contents
The term "emphatic do" is itself potentially somewhat misleading: one tends, probably naturally, to assume that what is emphasized is the lexical content of the verbal group. However, in fact, what is emphasized is the affirmation itself, i.e., what might be called the "non-negation". In this sense, "emphatic do" often functions somewhat like "si" in French: it denies a negation, whether implicit or explicit in the immediate context. « Notre équipe est nullissime: ils n'ont pas gagné un seul match la saison dernière » "Our team is utterly worthless: they didn't win a single game last season" « Si, si, ils ont battu les Escargots maladifs » : "Well, they did beat the Sickly Snails"
Another, related, use of "do" can be found in contrastive positions, in which, for example, a negation in the first part of a sentence is contrasted with an affirmative in the second part: "They didn't have any oranges, but they did have grapefruit."
Back to Contents
You watch something that moves and evolves, for example a soccer game on TV, partly, at least, in order to see how it will turn out. You look at something that does not move or change. So, if your TV breaks down and you can't watch it, you call the repairman so that he can look at it and fix it. (If you like technical things, you might watch the repairman while he looks at your TV )
Back to Contents
__________
* A "lemon" is a colloquial term in US English (and perhaps in British, too) that means a car that was purchased new and turns out to have many unrepairable defects. [back to text].