Hurdles in French

I truly hope that Anissa and Guillaume didn’t have a hard time translating our document. I’ve been reading up on the issues of English-to-French tranlsation, and there are quite a few factors to be mindful of. According to one site on “5 Challenges in English-French Translation,” the “French translations are about 15-20% longer than their original English text”. For a technical writer, making your sentences longer sounds totally counterproductive! Most of us would never dream of doing it, but the French language and syntax requires it for wording to make sense. Another site on “The Challenges of Translating into French” emphasizes that French “business writing especially uses the passive voice”. Wow! We have spent so much time learning about how to avoid the passive voice and write in active voice where it is most important that it’s surprising to hear it’s acceptable in another language. The same site also points out that the French language frequently coins specialized terms, meaning that technical jargon is commonplace in business documentation. I know our hardworking writers tried hard to avoid all of these things when making the initial drafts of our instruction, so it’s hard to imagine these things coming back into play in the French translation. I trust Anissa and Guillaume have done an excellent job, but I don’t doubt they had their work cut out for them. Hopefully when it comes time to test it all out, the translated instruction will perform swimmingly.