Is "normal" in French always normal?
To be sure, the French translation of the English word "normal" is normal -- but the situation is more complicated than it looks. French...
Translating French Prospectuses
The first thing to note when you translate a prospectus from French to English is that it is bound to include boilerplate from United...
The French They Never Taught You 22: de France or de la France?
The general rule in French is that you express "from" or "of" a feminine country using de without the definite article la: revenir de...
France vs. Quebec: toutou
Here's a logo from Quebec that is bound to confuse a reader from France. Why? Because it shows the wrong animal! The word toutou in...
The French They Never Taught You 21: Annoncer
Annoncer is one of those verbs whose meaning is so apparent that teachers expect to you to recognize it when you see it. Obviously it...
The French They Never Taught You 20: Là and Voilà
They teach you that ici is "here" and là is "there." Voici means "here is" and voilà is "there is." That is true, as far as it goes. But...
The French They Never Taught You 19: ne pas que
Every first-year French student learns the forms "ne...pas" (not) and "ne...que" (only). But when both structures appear together,...
The French They Never Taught You 18: ne pas être à quelque chose près
The meaning of the expression "ne pas être à quelque chose près" is not very obvious. Here is an example in context, from an article...
The French They Never Taught You 17: rêver
Early in their French studies, students learn that rêver means "to dream" and un rêve is a dream. So far so good. But the expression "to...
Another Legal Term to Watch Out For
As we saw in an earlier post, there are certain terms that can cause translators to and from the Romance languages to stumble. One of...
