French – Linguistic tips

Tip #1: Always make sure that the gender agreement is correct.

Always choose the right article for the nouns, even if the word is a glossary term. By not doing this, the sentences become unnatural and can be perceived as writen by a non-native speaker.

EN: the video. (when video is tagged as a glossary word)

FR: le vidéo. → It should be la vidéo

EN: the screenshot. (when screenshot is tagged as a glossary word)

FR: le capture d’écran. → It should be la capture d’écran.

Tip #2: Put the currency symbol in the correct place.

In French, the monetary currency is always placed after the number, with a whitespace between the number and the monetary symbol. In French, the decimal notation for numbers is noted with the comma ‘,’ instead of the dot ‘.’ in English.

EN: $9.99
FR: 9,99 $

EN: £2
FR: 2 £

Tip #3: About the French word ‘susmentionné’, and all the words with the ‘sus-’ prefix (i.e. ‘susnommé’, ‘susdit’, ‘susdénommé’, etc.):

Please keep the client’s consideration: l’information mentionnée ci-dessus / les informations mentionnées ci-dessus, and leave the word susmentionné for administrative communication, especially judicial messages.

It is a word still commonly in use for administrative communication (government texts, taxes, justice, etc.). But it is true that for others, non administrative kind of communications, including companies/customers communications, this word is not used, considered as too archaic for this kind of speech.

In general, if it’s not clearly administrative mails, it is better to change the French words with sus-PAROLE by PAROLE ci-dessus.

Tip #4: Saying thanks at the end of a message

EN: Thanks for getting in touch or Thank you for contacting us
FR: Merci de nous avoir contactés

Several mistranslations observed:
'Merci de nous avoir contacté' should be 'Merci de nous avoir contactés'. (Agreement)
'Merci d'avoir nous contactés' should be 'Merci de nous avoir contactés'. (Word order)

This form is regularly used and should be fixed as: ‘Merci de nous avoir contactés’ in this strict word order, and without forgetting the ‘s’ at the end of ‘contactés’.

Tip #5: Problems about the agreement between determiners and glossary terms

The agreements between determiners and glossary terms seem quite unstable, it affects specifically determiners in various texts. In general, they are considered by default as a singular masculine word when attached to a glossary term.

EN: any copyright owner
FR: *toute titulaire du droit d'auteur. → it should be 'tout titulaire du droit d'auteur'.

EN: our community guidelines
FR: *notre règles de la communauté. → it should be 'nos règles de la communauté'.

EN: the lecture
FR: *le session. → it should be 'la session'.

EN: your lectures
FR: *votre sessions. → it should be 'vos sessions'

EN: a lecture
FR: *un session. → it should be ‘une session’

It can also affect the punctuation:

EN: the item
FR: *l article. → it should be ‘l’article’.

Juxtaposition of two glossary terms can be problematic too:

EN: arrival airport shuttle
FR: *l'arrivée navette aéroport. → it should be 'l'arrivée de la navette aéroport'

Tip #6: Farewells

Always double check that the farewells contain the name of the person who is signing the email.

ENG: Kind regards, Liam.
FR: *Cordialement, Cordialement. → it should be ‘Cordialement, Liam’.

ENG: With kind regards, Sanmaya R.
FR: *Cordialement, Cordialement. → it should be ‘Cordialement, Snamaya R.’.

Tip #7: Opening formulas

Be careful with the English expression to introduce oneself: ‘this is NAME’. The translation is oftenly overly literal. It should always be translated as: ‘je suis NAME’.

ENG: this is Peter.
FR: *ceci est Peter. → it should be ‘je suis Peter’.

ENG: this is Sarah. FR: *voici Sarah. → it should be ‘je suis Sarah’.

Tip #8: Whitespaces around glossary terms

When an English glossary word is translated in French, and when this word is attached to an article with an apostrophe, there’s oftenly an extra whitespace in the translation. There should never be a whitespace after or before an apostrophe.

FR: *l’ établissement. → it should be ‘l’établissement’.

ENG: the cancellation period. (glossary word)
FR: *la période d’ annulation. → it should be ‘la période d’annulation’.

ENG: the customer service team. (glossary word)
FR: *l’ équipe du service client. → it should be ‘l’équipe du service client’.

ENG: check-in date. (glossary word)
FR: *date d ‘arrivée. → it should be ‘date d’arrivée’.

Tip #9: The following punctuation marks are always preceded by a whitespace:

1. les fruits
2. le poisson

1. les fruits
2. le poisson 

Tip #10:

Please check if special characters are correctly rendered from the source text to the target. Among the characters that can produce wrong translations, you can find: &, %, >, < etc.