Translation and mediation between French and English
What translation and mediation reward
You translate in both directions and may be asked to relay or summarise a short text for a different audience - the mediation element. The test is meaning, register and naturalness, not word-for-word equivalence. Calques are penalised; a target text that reads as though written in that language is rewarded.
Method
- Read the whole passage for function: informative, ironic, persuasive, administrative?
- Segment into sense units and identify fixed expressions before translating anything.
- Draft, then re-read the target text alone: does it stand as English or as French prose?
- Check number formats, dates, capitalisation and tense sequence.
Typical structures
- French « on » → English passive, you, we or they, by register: « On m'a fait remarquer que... » → It was pointed out to me that...
- English gerund subject → French infinitive or noun: Smoking is banned → « Il est interdit de fumer ».
- The explétif « ne » after « avant que », « de peur que », « craindre que » carries no negative force: « Je crains qu'il ne vienne » = I'm afraid he may come.
- Idioms: « avoir le coup de foudre » (to fall head over heels), « poser un lapin » (to stand someone up), « il n'y a pas le feu » (there's no rush).
Worked example
Source: « On m'a fait remarquer que la réunion aurait pu être reportée. » Target: It was pointed out to me that the meeting could have been postponed. Reasoning: « on » plus « faire remarquer » is best rendered by an impersonal passive; « aurait pu être reportée » is a past conditional passive, matching could have been postponed. A simple past - could be postponed - would shift the meaning to a present possibility and lose the reproach implicit in the original.
Traps
- Calques: actually for actuellement, formation for training, sensible for sensible (use raisonnable).
- French uses a decimal comma and a space for thousands; nationalities and months are lowercase (« un élève français », « en janvier »).
- Mechanical tense mapping: passé composé becomes simple past or present perfect depending on context.
- Dropping a negation hidden in « ne... que » or « ne... guère ».
- Mediation tasks need a reframed summary, not a compressed literal translation.