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Guidelines for Translation from French into English

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Robin Lambert

Part 3 Vocabulary

Numbers

Texte intégral

1) How to write figures

When you see figures (546) translate with figures (546). When you see words (douze) translate with words (twelve). Do not translate 546 by five hundred and forty six. It is not correct usage and you risk making a mistake, such as fourty instead of forty.

The American newspaper International Herald Tribune uses 70 percent.

The British Guardian and The Times use 70 %.

Do not forget decimal points and commas are different in English and French:

French 75,2

English 75.2

Three thousand is written 3,000 in English and 3.000 (or 3 000) in French.

Three million is 3,000,000 in English and 3.000.000 in French.

2) A figure or a date can be used as an adjective

a 25 % increase

a 500-euro coat

a 20-mile journey

the 1991 Gulf War

the January sales

the Monday blues

Remember that adjectives are always singular.

3) How to translate de with numbers

The word de in French is not always translated by ‘of’ when you are discussing figures. There are three possibilities:

a) A change is expressed by the preposition ‘by’, when the preposition comes after a verb. Here the percentage represents the difference between a starting figure and an ending figure.

Les ventes de logement ont baissé de 38,6 % en mars. (verb followed by de) Property sales went down by 38.6 percent in March.
Il en résulte que les effectifs de coccinelles ont quasiment doublé sur la période pendant que les populations de pucerons chutaient d’un facteur 2,5.
Le Figaro, 15 juin 2012

As a result, the number of ladybirds has almost doubled during the period, while aphid populations have dropped by a factor of 2.5.

b) A change is expressed by the preposition ‘of’, when the preposition comes after a noun.

une baisse de 20 % (noun followed by de)

a drop of 20 %

c) When you have the starting figure and the final figure, then you use ‘from… to… ’.

Si le taux passe de 35 % à 50 %, cela entraîne un quasi doublement des réserves.

If the rate rises from 35 % to 50 %, that will cause the reserves to nearly double.

Note: the noun ‘increase’ is followed by the preposition ‘in’ with a noun, but it is followed by ‘of’ with figures.

An increase in violence in the inner cities

An increase of 40 %

4) Using ‘the’with numbers

When a noun is followed by a cardinal number, it does not take the word ‘the’:

in Article I of the Constitution at No. 1 Nuclear Reactor
on platform 5 at gate 7
take metro line 4 in room 310
in seat 77 in spring/summer/autumn/winter 2008

according to UN Resolution 1441 in Section 6 of the 1944 Planning Act

during World War I and World War II (or: World War One and World War Two) or: during the First World War and the Second World War (these are ordinal numbers, first, second, third etc, which can take ‘the’).

Exception: British motorways, such as the M25 around London, the M1, the M4 etc. In the USA, you take Route 61 to New Orleans or Interstate 10 to Baton Rouge.

5) How to translate sur with numbers

The following text is taken from an exam:

Sur quelque 196 000 bulletins dépouillés, sur un total de 1,8 million d’inscrits, Mme Sirleaf arrivait en tête avec 44,5 % des voix, suivie de M. Tubman (26,5 %), selon de premiers résultats. Seulement 2,5 % des bulletins de la région de Montserrado, où vivent un million de Libériens, sur les quatre millions que compte au total le pays, sont comptabilisés.
Le Monde, 13 octobre 2011

The word sur occurs three times and students used: on, among, of, over, into, from, in, beyond, for and upon.

Choosing a preposition is not like choosing numbers in a lottery. Do NOT do this. sur followed by figures is normally translated as ‘out of’.

In this text you have sur followed by figures: Sur quelque 196 000… sur 1,8 million … sur les quatre millions

Here, you MUST use ‘out of’ to translate.

Out of about 196,000 ballot papers counted, out of a total of 1.8 million registered voters, Mrs Sirleaf came first with 44.5 % of the votes, followed by Mr Tubman (26.5 %), according to early returns. Only 2.5 % of the votes have been counted in the region of Montserrado, where one million Liberians live, out of the four million in the whole country.

Note: in this text, compter is NOT ‘to count’, but comptabiliser IS ‘to count’. Do not forget to write figures correctly in English with commas and decimal points: 196,000 and 1.8 million.

Another way to translate sur:

If you have two figures linked by sur, you can use ‘out of’ or ‘in’.

un sur dix can be translated as ‘one out of ten’OR ‘one in ten’.

6) How to translate dizaine

You have probably been told to translate dizaine by ‘dozen’. This is fine for counting people and eggs, but in other cases you can use ‘ten’ or ‘tens’, especially for ‘tens of thousands of people’, or ‘tens of millions of people’, NOT ‘dozens of thousands of people’. Do NOT say ‘tens of hundreds’ - just give the figure.

For example:

Lundi, plus d’un demi-millier de moines du grand monastère de Drepung, situé à moins d’une dizaine de kilomètres du centre-ville, ont défilé dans les rues de Lhassa.
Le Monde, 14 mars 2008

On Monday, more than five hundred monks from the great monastery of Drepung, less than ten kilometres from the city centre, marched through the streets of Lhasa. NOT: more than half a thousand of monks… situated at less than a dozen kilometres of…

7) Vocabulary used with figures

Here are some of the problem words in translation. The difficulty is using words in context – for example s’installer does not mean ‘settle down’ in a financial context. S’établir is another word which must be analysed in context.

The verbs passer and dépasser cannot be translated by ‘to pass’. Use ‘to go over’ or ‘to go under’ or other words according to the context.

‘To grow up’ means devenir adulte and cannot be used with figures. Use ‘to grow’, and the noun form is ‘growth’, la croissance. Remember ‘growth’ is an abstract noun and rarely takes the word ‘the’.

Compare: The growth of the population is a huge problem in China.

Population growth is a huge problem in China. (NOT ‘the population growth’)

The verb compter is not always translated by ‘to count’. In English, ‘to count’ usually means énumérer, as when you are counting people in the room, one, two, three etc. Don’t forget the simple way to say it: ‘there is’ or ‘there are’.

The word gonfler is often used in French. It has several possible translations in English. Do not use ‘to swell’ or ‘to pump up’ with figures. Chiffres gonflés can be translated as ‘inflated figures’ or ‘exaggerated figures’ (when you are trying to make the situation seem better than it is). Otherwise it just means to increase, go up etc. The word faible is regularly used with figures, or in a financial context in French. ‘Feeble’ or ‘weak’ are used in English to refer to the lack of strength of a person. Translate with ‘low’, for example le faible coût is ‘the low cost’. But you can say ‘the market is weak’, meaning confidence is low among investors.

The verb estimer can be translated by ‘to estimate’ but be careful with the preposition after it.

Le total, estimé à 2823 incidents, peut être augmenté d’au moins 500 cas.

The total, estimated at (not ‘to’) 2,823 incidents, can be increased by at least 500 cases. To raise-raised-raised is a transitive verb, and takes a direct object: he raised the price. To rise-rose-risen is an intransitive verb and does not take a direct object: the price rose. To arise-arose-arisen is a completely different intransitive verb, translated as survenir, surgir, se présenter, se poser.

Nouns: a rise and a raise.

A rise is une hausse, une augmentation, une élévation.

Note different expressions: a rise in inflation, the rise of inflation, a rise in prices, the rise of prices, the price rise or price rises. You do not say ‘the inflation rise’ or ‘the temperature rise’ etc. See the section on le groupe nominal.

The use of ‘raise’ is usually limited to ‘a salary raise’: une augmentation de salaire.

8) Ranking: the first, second, third etc

You cannot describe a country or an organisation as being the first, or the second – you need to say first, second… + the precise aspect. Premier may often be translated by ‘leading’, not ‘first’.

Examples:

Areva, qui se veut premier fournisseur de technologie nucléaire civil aux Etats-Unis, avec 6 000 employés, est bien sûr ravi de ce « début de renaissance du nucléaire » aux Etats-Unis.

Areva, which claims to be the leading supplier of civilian nuclear technology in the United States, with 6,000 employees, is certainly thrilled about this ‘dawn of a nuclear renaissance’ in the United States.

Le troisième pays de la planète par sa natalité est le Nigeria, pays où naissent, chaque année, plus de bébés que dans l’ensemble de l’Union européenne.
Le Monde, 15 novembre 2009

You cannot say ‘Nigeria is the third country in the world’. This gives the impression that you are counting, one, two, three…

Nigeria has the third-highest birth rate in the world: every year, more babies are born there than in the whole of the European Union.

L’Afrique subsaharienne est la deuxième région au monde la plus rapide après l’Asie en développement depuis quelques années.
Adapté de Le Monde, 15 mai 2012

For several years, subsaharan Africa has had the second-highest growth rate in the world after Asia.

Que la Chine ait détrôné les Etats-Unis en 2009 comme premier marché automobile mondial, et qu’elle soit devenue le deuxième importateur de brut devant le Japon a conforté les milieux pétroliers dans leur analyse: l’ex-empire du Milieu sera le plus puissant relais de croissance d’un secteur qui ne compte désormais plus sur l’Amérique du Nord et l’Europe pour trouver de nouveaux débouchés.
Le Monde, 25 février 2010

The fact that China dethroned the United States in 2009 as the world’s leading car market, and that it has become the second-largest importer of crude oil, importing more than Japan, reinforces the analysis of oil-producers: the former Middle Kingdom will be the most powerful area for growth…

le cinquième pays du monde - the world’s fifth-largest country (Brazil)

If a country is le premier then a possible translation is ‘the leading country’.

9) Singular and plural currencies

Dollars and pounds can be singular or plural but they are usually written with their symbols: $15,000 or £15,000 - when you speak, you say fifteen thousand dollars or fifteen thousand pounds. The same applies to other major currencies: 15,000 euros, 15,000 francs, marks, rupees, pesos etc.

But there are exceptions: the Chinese yuan and the Japanese yen (the same exception applies to Korean won, Turkish lira, Croatian kuna and some others). The yuan and the yen do not take a plural ‘s’.

He earns 15,000 yuan/yen a month (not yuans/yens)

Examples using figures:

La croissance ne dépassera pas 2 % pour l’année. Growth will not go over 2 percent for the year.
Rien n’est réglé pour le secteur des transports, qui dépend à 97 % des carburants pétroliers. No solution has been found for the transport sector, which is 97 % dependent on petroleum fuel.
Le nombre de chômeurs… on compte
63 % de plus qu’il y a douze mois.
There are 63 percent more people unemployed than twelve months ago.
Il faut remonter à 1998 pour trouver un nombre de ventes aussi faible en mai. You have to go back to 1998 to find sales figures as low (such low sales figures) in
May.
OR: sales figures for May have not been so low since 1998.
Au Brésil, la totalité de l’éthanol est produite sur moins de 1 % des 340 millions d’hectares de terres agricoles. In Brazil, the total production of ethanol comes from less than one percent of the 340 million hectares of land under cultivation.
avec un effondrement à moins de 10 dollars en 1998 with a drop to less than 10 dollars in 1998
après avoir stagné à 20-25 dollars entre
1986 et 2003
after having stagnated at 20-25 dollars between 1986 and 2003
Cette dépendance se reflète dans la hausse de la facture énergétique française. A 46,2 milliards d’euros, elle s’est alourdie de
18,5 % en 2006 après 37,5 % en 2005.
This dependence is shown by the rise in the French energy bill. It stands at 46.2 billion euros, and rose by 18.5 % in 2006, following a 37.5 % rise in 2005.
La consommation globale d’énergie entre
1990 et 2005 a crû de 23 % dans les pays développés notamment du fait du transport et de l’habitat, deux secteurs qui ont vu leur consommation gonfler de 37 %.
Between 1990 and 2005 the world consumption of energy grew by 23 percent, particularly because of transport and housing, two sectors where consumption has increased by 37 percent.
Des centaines de passagers étaient cloués au sol dans plusieurs aéroports espagnols samedi après que la compagnie aérienne
Spanair a brutalement mis fin à ses activités.
Hundreds of passengers were stuck on the ground in several Spanish airports on Saturday when the airline company
Spanair suddenly stopped working.
En France le taux d’inflation passe de
7,9 % en 1973 à 14 % l’année suivante, et dépasse encore les 13 % en 1980.
In France the inflation rate went from 7.9 percent in 1973 to 14 percent the following year, and in 1980 it was still over 13 percent.
La croissance faiblit: de 4,9 % en 1976 elle passe à 1,6 % en 1980. There was a fall in growth: from 4.9 percent in 1976 it fell to 1.6 percent in
1980.
Le chômage s’installe, avec un taux de
7,5 % en 1980, trois points de plus qu’en
1976.
Unemployment took hold, with a rate of 7.5 percent in 1980, three percentage points more than in 1976.
L’administration américaine d’informations sur l’énergie (EIA) s’attend, en 2008, à une hausse de la consommation de seulement 1,2 million de barils par jour, contre une moyenne de 1,7 million entre
2004 et 2006.
The U.S. government agency, the Energy
Information Administration (EIA), expects/predicts a rise in consumption in 2008 of only 1.2 million barrels a day, compared with an average of 1.7 million between 2004 and 2006.
En 2005, China Aviation Oil s’est effondrée après avoir perdu 500 millions de dollars à Singapour. In 2005, China Aviation Oil collapsed after losing 500 million dollars in Singapore.
(or: $500m)
… les sommes que les assureurs garantissent représentent actuellement 140 fois leurs fonds propres. the sum that these insurers guarantee today represents 140 times the amount of their own funds.
Le chiffre d’affaires, de 1 million d’euros, a augmenté de 30 % d’une année sur l’autre. The turnover of one million euros has risen by 30 percent from one year to the next.
Notre volume de recherches a doublé en
2007, avec une embauche dans 60 % des cas.
Our volume of research doubled in 2007, taking on more employees in 60 % of cases.
Le rattrapage économique des pays dits émergents a de quoi surprendre. Alors que la croissance annuelle des pays développés s’est établie à une moyenne de 2,3 % depuis 2002, la leur a atteint 7 % sur la même période. Countries referred to as ‘emerging’ have caught up economically to an astonishing degree. While the annual growth of developed countries has stabilised at an average of 2.3 % since 2002, their growth reached 7 % in/over the same period.
Sur les 480 Woolworths qui ont été repris (sur un total de 807) 134 ont été racheté par Poundland. Out of the 480 Woolworths stores which have been taken over (out of a total of
807) 134 have been bought by Poundland.
L’association du planning familial irlandais estimait à six mille le nombre d’Irlandaises se rendant chaque année en
Grande-Bretagne
The Irish Family Planning Association estimated that six thousand Irish women go to Great Britain every year.
L’explosion s’est produite dans le quartier commerçant de Kizilay, fréquenté chaque jour par des dizaines de milliers de gens. … visited every day by tens of thousands of people. (NOT dozens)
Mardi, plus d’un demi-millier de moines ont organisé une manifestation. On Tuesday, more than five hundred monks organised a demonstration.

Note on the last example: You cannot say ‘half a thousand’ or ‘half a hundred’. You must translate by ‘five hundred’ or ‘fifty’. You can say ‘half a dozen’ or ‘half a million’. You absolutely must NOT say ‘half a thousand of monks’. This is wrong.

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