LITERAL, OR DIRECT, TRANSLATION / TRADUCTION LITTÉRALE OU DIRECTE

To each English word of the sentence to be translated, corresponds a French word of a similar nature in the translation :

- He had always dreamed of going to Ireland : Il avait toujours rêvé d'aller en Irlande

Such word-for-word translation is seldom to be found as English and French syntaxes are far apart. A verbatim translation is valid only if the target language retains the same syntax, meaning and style as the source language.

Translating literally into French often results in a faulty "calque" :

- Her father was a writer : Son père était un écrivain (instead of Son père était écrivain)

(but Her father was a well-known writer : Son père était un écrivain connu)

- the State Department (US) : le Département d'Etat (instead of le Ministère américain des affaires étrangères)

ANSWERS