There are three main ways to translate French into English, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Firstly, you can use your own knowledge of French and English to help you accurately translate a text or document.
If there is any vocabulary that you do not know, understand, or recognise, use a paper dictionary such as a Collins French dictionary, or as we are in the twenty-first century and we have a variety of technology at our disposal, you can use an online dictionary, such as WordReference or Reverso, for example. The advantages of this method are that it is quite simple, and you don’t need to have so many tools at your disposal, and you can get a very accurate text at the end of the translation process. The disadvantage of this method is that perhaps it is too much manual work involved in translating a document.
The second main way of translating French into English is to use an app to do the translation, such as TripLingo or Jibbigo.
The advantages of this translation process are that everything is done for you in the app, except the quality assurance, but that works better with human input. But, the main disadvantage of this method is that the translation from the app may not be as accurate as it needs to be, for example, if you are translating a business document, you need to convey the right sense in both languages, so this will still need some human input to correct this issue.
Thirdly, you could use a CAT tool, such as Memsource or Trados, which is a common tool used by professional translators for a professional translation company. The advantages of this method are that, they are very clever software programmes, so it will create a translation memory and you can also create a term base to help you save recurring terms. I don’t believe this method has any considerable disadvantages.
What it takes to translate French into English naturally
French tolerates longer sentences, more abstract nouns and a more formal register than English does. Translated directly, the result is grammatical and slightly pompous, which is the most common complaint about French to English work.
The fix is structural rather than lexical: split sentences at the semicolons, turn abstract nouns back into verbs, and cut the connectors that French uses for rhythm and English does not need. False friends matter too, but they are easier to catch.
Our French translation service covers this work, and the art and science of translation looks at the wider question.
