principles Flashcards
with regards to vocabulary
consider lexical fields
with register, french
gets away with more formality than english
french gets away with longer sentences
that may need to be broken up in english to sound more natural
only penalised for things
that distort the meaning or effect of the text; get creative but not too creative!
making sense in english means more than
keeping true to the original text. do not send in rubbish
for something culturally specific in the text/culture
might be worth finding a cultural equivalent in english
do not translate
place names; keep ‘rue’ as itself too
with the word ressemble
it’s more neutral in french, and can be strong or weak depending on context. e.g. ‘looks like’
dans le sens
in the direction of
et si
means what if. ALWAYS
gold in the plural
does not exist; try to convey the gold sense onto something else
il s’agit de
it’s a matter of/what’s at stake/what matters. as an imperative, like ‘the main thing now’
imperfect
was + present tense
for literary writing
don’t be afraid to go super OTT
il est/il était
can mean there is/was
se voir
puts things into the passive. e.g. je me suis vu volé = i was robbed
son can be the possessive
for ‘on’ as well as ‘il/elle’
‘re’ prefix outside of the typical verbs
can be a humorous way to say ‘another’ - think about conveying potential humour
french uses a lot of nouns
which would default to being verbs in english
translating ‘on’ (pronoun) as ‘one’
is often the worst possible solution, turning something casual in french and giving it a formal register in english. can mean people/thepublic/we/they. also think about the passive
comme without a noun
is a preposition; like ‘since’ or ‘seeing as
aussi can also mean
consequently/so/therefore/as a result
when dealing with long sentences
look for the main verb + subject, and bracket these off. then think about adverbs. then the stuff in the middle. then go back to relative clauses. find the spine of the sentence, then everything else.
sometimes french uses colons
which would make more sense as commas in english
might make sense to replace a french colon
with a connective depending on the part before
if there are multiple ‘qui’s you have to fit
can leave one out
might make sense to repeat certain markers which aren’t repeated in the original text
to show the examiner you know what you’re doing
fit + infinitive
was + verb - passé simple
estoit + etoit
mean était
eust
would have
-oit
old version of -ait
vowel + circumflex
would probably be rendered to vowel + s in older texts
