Chapter 1

Le Mot juste

To be comfortable in another language you need roughly half of the words

you possess in your native language – 25,000. As about 40 percent are vari-
ants of other words and can be easily inferred, a good estimate of truly unique
words you need to start with is 15,000 words.
This is a huge number and double what you are expected to learn in 8 years
at school. Fortunately, you do not always have to learn them all.
Take the word evolution. In Spanish, Italian, and French, the word trans-
lates into evolución, evoluzione and évolution. As you can see, many words are
almost identical between some languages and come with just slight differences
in packaging. Once you understand the rules that govern these differences, you
have immediate access to thousands of words.
(Bernd Sebastian Kamps, 2010: 13)

Summary
One of the main objectives of this chapter is to draw attention to the fact that there
is rarely a one-to-one relationship between the signifiers encountered in French
and in English. The “signifiers” we shall examine here will be words, or lexical
items. In focusing on word meaning, or lexical semantics, we will look at ways in
which French and English make different choices when it comes to categorising
experience. Firstly, we acknowledge how there are many similarities and bor-
rowings within the two languages, owing to the communal ancestry of the two
languages. We also attend to significant lexical differences between French and
English and the ways in which we must be mindful of the fact that full equiva-
lence between lexical items is rare. Throughout our examples, we have recourse
to lexicological notions to identify the complex way words are patterned, linked
together, fossilised and made new. Crucially, we show how a familiarity with
these specific features can be useful for navigating between the two languages
when translating.

Introduction
It is easy to assume that translation is easy, especially when it comes to vocabu-
lary. All you need is a good dictionary, and off you go. Imagine that you are at
2  Le Mot juste

Figure 1.1 

a museum and you see a 17th-century portrait of a man with the following cap-
tion: man in armour with yellow flowing hair. A simple sentence to translate. You
remember studying colours in the first few weeks of your French course – yellow
is jaune and has always been jaune, just like brown is marron, and what about
ginger, is it red, or is it something else? Anyway, you came up with Homme en
armure aux cheveux jaunes et ondulés. You have nailed it (well done for suggest-
ing ondulé and for making cheveux plural), except that unless you are describing
a Playmobil figurine, using the adjective jaune to describe the colour of a person’s
 Le Mot juste 3

hair is bound to get a few sneers from your Francophone friends. Similarly, using
the word femelle when trying to explain to your feminist friends that feminism is
not solely a female issue, le féminisme ça n’est pas que pour les femelles (said
in an attempt to express the idea that feminism is not just a female issue) might
incur the ire of your feminist interlocutors, and for very good reasons. Regardless
of their actual take on the issue, such a statement is likely to be interpreted as an
insult. Et pourtant, I hear you say, c’était dans le dictionnaire. Of course it is in
the dictionary, and you certainly did not mean to insult anyone, and using femelle
to translate female works in a large number of contexts. It is just that certain forms
that share formal properties in both languages are not semantically equivalent, or
not in every context. An “equivalent” term might be restricted to certain usages
and carry different connotations and associations (in French, femelle is restricted
to animals and using it to refer to women is thus highly offensive).

1 Linguistic systems and conceptual categories

The fact that linguistic systems organise the world into different conceptual cat-
egories obviously makes the task of translating difficult. What does it mean when
we suggest a word or concept is “untranslatable”? As Emily Apter underlines
(Cassin, 2017: xiv), one of the risks “of the casual use of ‘untranslatable’ is the
suggestion of an always absent perfect equivalence. Nothing is exactly the same
in one language as in another, so the failure of translation is always necessary and
absolute”. That said, this rather neglects the fact that “some pretty good equiva-
lences are available” and that such a proposition rests on “a dream of perfection
we cannot even want, let alone have”. As Apter underlines, this longing for per-
fection is unwanted, since, if there were a perfect equivalence from language to
language, “the result would not be translation; it would be a replica”.
As Jonathan Culler pointed out in his introduction to the work of the linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure:

If languages were simply a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts, it

would be easy to translate from one language to another. One would simply
replace the French name for a concept with the English name. If language
were like this the task of learning a new language would also be much easier
than it is. But anyone who has attempted either of these tasks has acquired,
alas, a vast amount of direct proof that languages are not nomenclatures,
that the concepts [. . .] of one language may differ radically from those of
another. [. . .] Each language articulates or organizes the world differently.
Languages do not simply name existing categories, they articulate their own.
(J. Culler, 1976: 21–22)

Saussure himself famously pointed out that sheep and mouton might have the
same meaning (as both terms can be used to refer to the same animal), but do not
4  Le Mot juste

have the exact same value within their respective linguistic systems (i.e. sheep
does not have the exact same value in English as mouton does in the French lexi-
con because of the presence of the term mutton in the English lexicon). Addition-
ally, to know is not the equivalent of connaître, as in some cases it can also be
translated by savoir (Vinay and Darbelnet, 1958).
Observations of this kind are not simply anecdotal. The interdependency of
linguistic items within a system is a crucial notion in linguistic theory, as is the
notion labelled by Saussure as the “arbitrariness of the sign” (i.e. there is nothing
in the actual form of the word that has any direct connection with the object it
refers to in the real world). The arbitrariness of the sign means that the way the
world is conceptualised in the different languages of the world is never identical
between two languages.
However, the fact that language B does not have a lexical item that perfectly
matches a lexical item in language A does not mean that the concept in question
cannot be communicated in language B. If, as conceptual systems, languages tend
to show a lot of differences, they also do have a lot in common. From a cognitive
point of view, natural languages are, after all, the product of the human brain,
and, from an anthropological point of view, they are used the globe over in simi-
lar ways. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have rightly shown, the metaphors that
appear in idioms in different languages often operate on the same principles  –
language A  and language B might not have exactly the same idiom (i.e. idiom
A might not be translatable word for word in language B), but the principles at
play are identical. Whether you have a frog or a cat in your throat is significantly
different and yet conceptually very similar from the point of view of the processes
involved in creating an idiom of this kind. A spade might not be called a spade
in French, and surveying garden tools and implements, or any kind of inanimate
object, will not help find the right French term to stand in for a spade. In fact, it is
an animal that is required: appeler un chat un chat. That said, both to call a spade
a spade and appeler un chat un chat operate on the principle of calling a some-
thing a something. We are therefore dealing with a structure that is productive in
both languages and can easily lend itself to a range of adaptations, depending on
context.

2 An Historical overview of the two languages

In addition to sharing properties because of the very nature of language, French
and English are also closely related historically and culturally. The Old French
motto Honi soit qui mal y pense, originally used as the motto of the British
chivalric Order of the Garter in the 14th century, can be found on every British
passport. Similarly, the motto Dieu et mon droit can be found on many official
buildings in the United Kingdom and as far afield as New Zealand and Australia.
However tempting it might be to see the presence of these French mottos in the
English-speaking world as purely anecdotal (or as a manifestation of a British
eccentricity, a remnant of a long-gone form of Francophilia), they are in fact a
 Le Mot juste 5

reminder that following the Norman Conquest of 1066, Norman French was the
primary language of the English Royal Court and ruling elite. And it continued to
be for well over three centuries.
This situation had a profound effect on the English lexicon. According to emi-
nent experts, such as David Crystal (Crystal, 2003), after the Norman Conquest,
the influx of words from the continent doubled the size of the lexicon to over
100,000 items, and many French terms were borrowed and integrated into Mid-
dle English (authority, accuse, abbey, art, action, advise, the list is considerable).
Besides, it was not solely words that were borrowed from the French language but
also affixes and their derivational patterns (con-, trans-, pre-, -ance, -tion, -ment).
This created many commonalities between the two languages, which gives Eng-
lish language learners of French a great advantage, since for an English speaker
a large section of the French lexicon is already familiar, as are some of the pro-
cesses by which new words are created. If we add to this the fact that English also
borrowed several thousand words from Latin in the 14th and 15th century, via
Spanish and Italian, we can rightly expect the similarities between the French and
English lexicons to be even more significant. According to Crystal, “by the end
of the Renaissance, the growth in classically-derived vocabulary, especially from
Latin had doubled the size of the lexicon again” (2003). Some of the Latin-derived
words found in the English lexicon might not be identical to those encountered in
the French language, but most will show a definite air de famille. Consider, for
instance, the adjective kingly and its synonyms royal and regal in English – kingly,
which has a Germanic origin, has no counterpart in French, while royal, which
comes from the French, does: royal (same spelling). So too does regal which
comes from Latin and corresponds to the adjective régalien in French.
Owing to the essentially dual origin of the English lexicon (Germanic on the
one hand and Latin and French on the other), there are many doublets (pairs of
words) in English (note, in passing, that the term doublet itself comes from Old
French). One of the most noticeable manifestations of this phenomenon is the
presence of a term to designate an animal (ox, calf, sheep) and of another one
for the meat (beef, veal, mutton). This is a distinction which probably originates
in the fact that while the peasantry who looked after cattle in the Middle English
period (1100–1400) spoke English, the aristocracy and ruling elite who consumed
the meat spoke French (Paillard, 2000). This also explains the presence of syno-
nyms such as bring up and educate, wound and injure, looking-glass and mirror,
might and power, folk and people, clever and intelligent and so on – and of terms
based on a figure of speech called hendiadys (literally two for one), which is used
for emphasis and in most cases consists in two words linked by the conjunction
“and” (e.g. nice and clean) where one term has a Germanic origin the other one
a Latin one: I pray and beseech you, my last will and testament, by leaps and
bounds (Paillard, 2000).
Taking note of the communal ancestry French and English share can, from
the point of view of translation, provide ways of overcoming translation difficul-
ties at a lexical level. When faced with a particularly difficult word to translate
6  Le Mot juste

from English into French, it is always a good strategy to try and see, for instance,
whether there might be a synonym in English which might correspond to a cog-
nate word in French.
If, for instance, you have to translate the following sentence:

She was given a reward

but cannot think of a word in French to translate reward, try to think of a synonym
in English for reward – recompense or prize, for instance (for which there are
terms in French which are almost morphologically identical):1

On lui a remis une récompense.

On lui a remis un prix.

3 The Trouble with polysemy

Overall, however, it is important to keep in mind, as indeed others have pointed
out, that in spite of the numerous clues sharing a common ancestry provides, “full
cross-linguistic synonymy is the exception not the rule” (Hervey and Higgins,
1992: 90). If we look at the following,

Figure 1.2 
 Le Mot juste 7

leaving aside the issue of the tastelessness of the pun, it is clear that the intended
humour of the message is based on the polysemy (i.e. multiple meanings) of the
term erection (e.g. penile erection, erection of a building). If the pun can easily
be understood by a native speaker of French – the French term érection shares
the same Latin source (the noun erectio and the verb erigere) and can be used in
French with both meanings as in English – it would be unthinkable for a French
scaffolding company to have a slogan such as Spécialistes de l’érection. This is
because the second meaning (penile erection) is in contemporary French much
more salient than the first one (erection of a building); contrary to the verb ériger,
which can be used to refer to the erection of a building but not, in contempo-
rary French, for penile erection. The fact that two terms are formally identical
and etymologically related does not guarantee that they can be used interchange-
ably. Polysemy occurs and will occur whether the words in question are formally
related or not. Let us take the example of bathroom and salle de bain, which
seemingly refer to the same part of a house. If you wanted to go to the toilet and
requested the bathroom in English, your host would understand exactly what your
request was. However, if you asked a French speaker “Où est la salle de bain?”
they would assume you wanted to have a wash and would direct you to the salle
de bain, not to the toilet.

4 Friend or foe?
The French and English lexicons show a lot of similarities, and translation diffi-
culties can often be overcome (or even surmounted!) by going back to their com-
munal root. Awareness of etymological connections greatly helps develop one’s
translation and vocabulary learning strategies since there are many lexical items
that show kinship across the French and English lexicons, what we could call
bons amis. However, we also need to be mindful of the fact that full equivalence
between lexical items is rare. There are indeed numerous bons amis, as English-
speaking learners of French will know, but there is also a considerable amount of
faux amis, alas, a much more commonly known category, no doubt due to their
vast number. Because faux amis (i.e. deceptive cognates) are so numerous, we
will only outline briefly what the different categories are since several studies
have dealt with this issue quite comprehensively: dictionaries such as Koessler
and Derocquiny (1928), Kirk-Greene (1981), Thody, Evans and Rees (1985), Van
Roey et al. (1998), for instance, but also English-French translation handbooks
(Vinay Darbelnet, 1958; Chuquet and Paillard, 1987; Armstrong, 2005). First of
all, following Chuquet and Paillard’s 1987 typology, it is useful to distinguish
faux amis complets from faux amis partiels – the first category involves words
which show a strong formal resemblance but have nothing in common semanti-
cally (axe, coin, hate, supply, etc.) and constitute the category which is the least
troublesome since the risk of confusion is low. However, the risk is greater for
items that show a strong resemblance in form as well as kinship in meaning. This
is the case for terms such as agenda, attend, lecture, location, surname, trespass,
8  Le Mot juste

mundane and so on, which can never be translated by the formally equivalent
French term (agenda, attendre, lecture, location, etc.). In this sense, they are
faux amis complets and are, to an extent, easier to handle than faux amis partiels,
which also show formal and semantic similarities but can sometimes (however,
not always) be translated by the term that is formally equivalent in French (actual,
education, formal, book, chair, cake, oil, order, response, sympathy, charity, sur-
gery, golf, etc.).
Some cognate lexical items might also be used to denote the same reality but
have different connotations – that is the case for items such as routine, juvenile
and politician. En français: il faut casser la routine – in English, routine must be
preserved! In French, la routine refers to the tedium and monotony of everyday
life rather than a regular pattern of events. Similarly, if juvenile can be used in
French (as in English) to denote bad behaviour: la délinquance juvénile, it can
also be used to denote something positive: un sourire juvénile. It is interesting
to note that this term does exist in English but is used by dentists to refer to
teeth that are abnormally short from birth and not a youthful facial expression.
Similarly, politician, which is neutral in English, tends to be the equivalent of
femme/homme/figure politique rather than politicien-ne; the latter can be used in
French too (and perhaps more so in Canadian French than in European French)
but often appears in a context where politics and the actions of politicians are
decried. It is used with pejorative adjectives such as verreux, lamentable and
corrompu or, if used as an adjective, with nouns such as manipulation, manoeu-
vre and querelle.
The lack of one-to-one correspondence (or anisomorphism) between English
and French terms that share a communal ancestry is not confined to items that
English has borrowed from Latin or Old French. If we look at English words
that French has recently borrowed, it is clear that alongside straight borrow-
ings (i.e. where both meaning and form are borrowed), there are a number of
adapted borrowings (i.e. where the English form is gallicised, e.g. conteneur
rather than container) and semantic calques (which occurs when, in the case of
an already existing lexical item, a new meaning is borrowed: développer, réal-
iser, supporter).
The English suffix -ing has become highly productive in contemporary French.
However, it is often added to an English verb base to form nouns that do not
correspond to English usage. A lot of -ing words such as camping and parking
are in fact faux ami partiels: as in English, le camping can denote the activity of
camping, but in French it can also denote the place where one camps (i.e. a camp
site). Un parking also denotes the place where one parks (car park, parking lot) –
there is therefore a metonymic shift (from action to place), hence lexical items
such as footing (faire du footing, meaning to jog). These might, understand-
ably, surprise English speakers. Consider also the following: un lifting (a face
lift), un pressing (a dry cleaning business), or where the suffix -ing is added
to a French verb base: le bronzing (sun bathing). There are also cases where
only the English root is borrowed, in the case of speakerine (a female radio or
TV presenter, a term slightly quaint these days) or un catcheur (a wrestler). Ball
 Le Mot juste 9

trap is another faux anglicisme that English speakers might find puzzling; it means
clay pigeon shooting or trap-shooting, as might pipi room (an informal word for
the toilet, incidentally also used in Italian).
A lot of contemporary verbs are also created by adding the French suffix -er to
an English root (flipper, zapper, speeder) and usually have a meaning quite dis-
tinct from their meaning in English (flipper means freak out, zapper can only be
used in relation to TV channels, speeder means to rush or to feel nervous).
There are, of course, a lot of false Gallicisms in English too (items that do not
correspond morphologically and/or semantically to the original French etymon):
bon viveur (rather than bon vivant), folie de grandeur for folie des grandeurs,
deluxe for de luxe or haut de gamme, ensuite (bathroom) for (salle de bain) privée
ou attenante, a chandelier for un lustre, a foyer for un hall or un vestibule, a dou-
ble entendre (un sous-entendu or une allusion) – although double entendre comes
from the French, it is obsolete in contemporary French (see Solano, 2015 for an
in-depth overview of Gallicisms).
These items illustrate the fact that once borrowed forms enter a linguistic
system, they always undergo a process of assimilation into the TL system. This
assimilation is not always straightforward and borrowings raise morphological
questions. Both in French and English, speakers are often unsure of what the
plural form of nouns borrowed from Latin might be – what is the plural of cor-
pus: is it corpuses or corpora? Referendums or referenda? This also happens with
English nouns that are used in French. Let’s consider the case of the English
suffix -man, which has become quite productive in French; should French or Eng-
lish morphology prevail when used in the plural? Should the plural of tennisman
(i.e. tennis player) or rugbyman (i.e. rugby player) be tennismen/rugbymen, or
should it be tennismans/rugbymans? Note that both rugbyman and tennisman are
cases of the pseudo-anglicisms rugbyman, since they are lexical items that do not
correspond to English usage.

5 Morpho-semantic categories (polysemy, synonymy,

hyponymy, etc.)
Having a clear idea of the semantic relationship between lexical items in the lexi-
con is a useful skill for the translator. In what follows, we will be looking at differ-
ent kinds of lexical relationships. Polysemy, when lexical items can have different
acceptions (i.e. meanings) has been mentioned, as has synonymy (lexical items
which are formally distinct but have the same meaning). It is worth stressing that
pure synonymy, inter and intra-lingually, is rare. For example, father and daddy
correspond to the same person in the real world; however, these lexical items can-
not be used interchangeably in every context, as Umberto Eco points out (Eco,
2008), with the example of the Balzac novel title Le Père Goriot. Le Père cannot
be translated as daddy here because you would only use the latter to address your
own father in an affectionate manner. Interestingly, Father cannot be used either
because in English it is only used to refer to one’s own father or to a man of the
cloth.
10  Le Mot juste

Antonyms are also essential items in the translator’s toolbox. Where a synonym
will not work, if dealing with an affirmative sentence, an antonym (i.e. a word
opposite in meaning to another) combined with a negation might well do the trick.
If, for instance, you want to rewrite the following sentence and avoid using the
adjective cold:

The water is too cold.

One obvious solution is to propose:

The water is not hot enough.

When translating, this might be a useful strategy if you have to translate a term
that you cannot immediately find a synonym for, or if there is simply no equiva-
lent in the TL. There are three different types of antonyms: (1) binary opposites
where the two meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum: dead/alive, off/on,
day/night, identical/different; (2) gradable antonyms: hot/cold, warm/cool, heavy/
light, old/young, early/late; the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum; and
(3) relational antonyms: teacher/pupil, husband/wife, doctor/patient, and so on.
Let us now consider homonyms. Homonyms are lexical items which have the
same form but a different meaning. They can be either (1) homophones (words that
sound the same) or/and (2) homographs (words that are spelled in the same way).
Let us look at the translation of the following picture book for children, Give Us
a Smile, Cinderella. The king who wants his son to get married suggests organis-
ing a ball – We’ll hold a ball – to which his son responds: What, a football?

Figure 1.3 
 Le Mot juste 11

Figure 1.4 

The humour stems from the ambiguity of the term ball which can be used to
refer to (1) a formal occasion where people dance or (2) a spherical object used
in a game, hence the misunderstanding. We are dealing with two distinct words
(homonymy) rather than with one word with two different acceptions (polysemy),
as these terms have a different etymology; 1 and 2 come from two different ety-
mons: the Proto-Germanic ballu-z, and the Italian noun ballo from the verb bal-
lare (to dance), respectively. It goes without saying that translating a pun based
on homophony always poses a challenge, as two words that mean different things
but sound the same in the source language (SL) are unlikely to correspond to two
words that share those same characteristics in the TL.
The English term ball corresponds to two distinct French words which are also
homophones, une balle for (1), un bal for (2) – note that un ballon is however more
common when referring specifically to the spherical object people use when they
play football. While balle and bal are homophones, and could therefore trigger a
misunderstanding, which is what we are looking for here, one noun is masculine
and the other is feminine, and the risk of confusing one for the other is therefore
less likely to occur (il faut une balle cannot be confused for il faut un bal). Besides
that, the misunderstanding is reinforced in the source sentence by the use of the
verb hold in the sentence, “we’ll hold a ball”. So, the translator might be able
to use bal(le), but will have to be quite creative to provide something that will
work. Alternatively, the translator could opt for a different strategy and create an
ambiguous utterance that does not necessarily rely on the use of a homophone;
what matters is that the whole utterance lends itself to two distinct interpretations.
In the French edition of the book, the French translator uses un bal in the
French translation, trying to create an ambiguity based on the partial homoph-
ony of bal and ballon, as phonetically the first syllable of ballon is identical
to bal.
12  Le Mot juste

Figure 1.5 

Although a misunderstanding is created, the French utterance does not quite

have the immediacy and transparency of the English original, and it is hard to
imagine that it will have the same effect on the French reader. The reader will
clearly realise that there has been a misunderstanding but will probably not per-
ceive it as particularly humorous.

Figure 1.6 
 Le Mot juste 13

Another very useful notion when analysing the semantic relations between
lexical items that belong to the same linguistic system is the notion of
hypernymy and its structural counterpart: hyponymy. A hypernym is a word
with a generic meaning constituting a category into which words with more
specific meanings are included. For example, dog is a hypernym of animal;
collier is a hypernym of dog. The generic term is called a hypernym, the
specific one a hyponym (e.g. hypernym: dog; related hyponyms: poodle,
bulldog, labarador, German shepherd, etc.). Why is this useful to a trans-
lator, you may be wondering? Firstly, if the translator cannot find a word
specific enough in language B to translate a specific term in language A, s/
he might opt for a generic term. Secondly, it is important to note that there
are cases where language A  uses a hypernym and language B a hyponym
(and vice versa).
The English lexical item room can for instance be translated into French by
pièce if referring to the number of rooms in a house, chambre for the place where
one sleeps, or bureau for the place where one works (Chuquet and Paillard,
1987).
Other examples from English into French where English uses a generic term
and French a more specific one:

River: fleuve, rivière

Driver: conducteur, chauffeur, automobiliste
Brown: roux (sugar), brun/châtain (hair), marron (objects)
Bell: cloche (church), clochette, sonnette, sonnerie, timbre, grelot
Boot: botte, bottine, brodequin, grosse chaussure

The same phenomenon can be observed in the opposite direction (French hyperym
→ English hyponym):

Bord: edge, border, rim/brim, side, hem, brink, verge, shore/strand

Esprit: mind, spirit, wit
Education: education, upbringing, learning
Souvenirs: memories, souvenirs, memoirs
Grincement: grating, squeaking, scratching, creaking, scraping, screeching,
gnashing

The above examples are taken from Chuquet and Paillard (1987) and Demanuelli
and Demanuelli (1990). Paillard (2000) provides the following:

A clatter of dishes: un bruit de vaisselle

A scraping of chairs: un bruit de chaises
Sabre rattling: des bruits de bottes

Conclusion
In this overview, we have sought to give the reader a sense of some of the differ-
ent issues involved when focusing on lexis. Our main objective has been to show
14  Le Mot juste

that there is rarely a one-to-one relationship between French and English lexical
items, in spite of what could be anticipated between two languages that share a
common ancestry. Both languages partly developed from Latin, which largely
accounts for the morphological commonalities between the two languages – a
vast number of affixes can be transposed from one language to the other (con-,
trans-, pre-, -ance, -tion, -ment) and means that there is great transparency. How-
ever, these similarities are deceptive; they often are the arbre qui cache la forêt.
As we have seen, false friends are numerous and (pseudo-)Anglicisms and Gal-
licisms are far from being transparent. The same is true for connotations, which
can vary greatly even when two words are equivalent from the point of view of
their connotative meaning.
The objective of this chapter has been to try to develop a better understand-
ing of how lexis is organised in each language (internally and in relation to one
another). The exercises in the next section are designed to further explore the
challenges encountered thus far.

6 Activités de mise en pratique

I Etymologie comparée
Compléter les séries bilingues ci-dessous sur le modèle proposé. Noter les
cas pour lesquels le mot anglais d’origine française ou latine n’a pas exacte-
ment le même sens ou les mêmes connotations que le mot anglais d’origine
germanique.

Mot français Mot anglais (origine française Mot anglais (origine

ou latine) germanique)

abandoner to abandon to relinquish

commencer to commence to begin

adolescence

anniversaire

breuvage

chef

copieux

détester

enfant
 Le Mot juste 15

Mot français Mot anglais (origine française Mot anglais (origine

ou latine) germanique)

exécuter

fraternel

maternel

paternel

pensif,-ive

sentiment

vendre

voyage

II Noms composés: concret vs. abstrait; composition et dérivation

Comme le signalent Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), le français utilise souvent des
termes abstraits là où l’anglais utilise des termes concrets facilement reconnaiss-
ables. On a très souvent affaire en anglais à un nom composé (deux noms auto-
nomes sont combinés: a horse show) là où en français on rencontre un nom suivi
d’un adjectif relevant d’un processus de dérivation (pour former l’adjectif, on
combine une base et un affixe: hippique). On obtient alors pour “a horse show”
(nom + nom) “un concours hippique” (nom + adjectif formé à partir d’une base
savante: “hippo” plutôt que “cheval”).
Compléter sur cette base les séries ci-dessous.

Terme abstrait en français Terme concret en anglais

Un concours hippique A horse show

Un arbre généalogique A family tree

Un témoin oculaire

Un globe oculaire

Les papilles gustatives

Les empreintes digitales

La fréquence cardiaque
16  Le Mot juste

Terme abstrait en français Terme concret en anglais

Les dommages cérébraux

Une lotion capillaire

Une odeur corporelle

Un implant mammaire

On observe ce même phénomène pour certains noms français constitués à partir

d’une base savante (grecque ou latine):

Une otite An ear infection

Un orthophoniste

Un oto-rhino-laryngologiste

Un pédiluve

Un ophtalmologiste

Un antalgique

On retrouve également ce phénomène (nom ou adjectif abstrait en français,

nom ou adjectif concret en anglais) pour des syntagmes ne comportant pas une
base savante en français:

Les tâches ménagères housework

La table d’honneur

Le bureau central (d’une entreprise)

L’embouchure d’un fleuve

a time zone

La sécurité alimentaire

III Hyperonymes et hyponymes
Traduire les phrases suivantes en faisant attention aux mots soulignés:
 Le Mot juste 17

  1 Prince Charming had a privileged upbringing.

Aladdin only received a very basic education.

  2 Grandmother’s cottage in the wood has two rooms upstairs and two downstairs.

Although the princess didn’t want to sleep, she had to stay in her room and rest.

  3 Hansel has brown hair and wears brown shoes.

Gretel likes eating brown sugar and has ginger hair.

They live in a house made of gingerbread.

  4 Cinderella hurt her leg when running from the palace at midnight.

Do you know how many legs unicorns have?

  5 Sleeping Beauty did not hear the church bell this morning.

The Cheshire Cat did not have a bell around his neck.

  6 Poor Little Red Hen; whenever she asks the other animals for help, she gets
no assistance!

The Big Bad Wolf approached Little Red Riding Hood and asked her where
she was going.

  7 Do you know what shoe size the giant is?

The dragon lives in a house the size of a mountain.

  8 A girl stitching or doing domestic chores waiting for Prince Charming is

sexist!

The Beast had a nasty wound that required stitches.

 9 Puss in Boots is about a cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power.

“Forget about Seven-league boots; we don’t live in a fairy tale. I will put my
climbing boots on and climb up the tower”, said the prince to Rapunzel.

10 The National Dog Show had just started when the 101 Dalmatians arrived.

Jack went to buy some beans at the agricultural show in Paris.

18  Le Mot juste

IV Emprunts anglais utilisés en français

On rencontre en français beaucoup de termes empruntés à l’anglais. Ces
emprunts confèrent très souvent aux énoncés un aspect “cool”, une connotation
de (pseudo-)modernité qui explique en grande partie qu’on les retrouve fréquem-
ment dans le parler des jeunes (ou des “djeuns” pour reprende un terme de plus en
plus usité). Dans le texte ci-dessous, une adolescente parle de Kevin, un garçon
qu’elle a connu au lycée. Réécrivez ce texte en remplaçant les termes en italique
par des termes relevant du français standard.

Kevin était vraiment un mec trop cool. Avec lui, on savait toujours à quoi
s’en tenir. Un mec vraiment au top qui speedait jamais, ne partait jamais
en live, toujours super relax. Je savais que je pouvais vraiment compter sur
lui. J’aimais bien son côté clean: toujours bien coiffé, bien habillé, et jamais
d’embrouilles. En plus, il était super fun et avait un look un peu bcbg que
j’aimais bien. J’adorais quand il mettait son blazer ou parfois son duffel
coat . . . il était à l’opposé des bad boys qu’il y a partout. Malheureusement,
il a déménagé et on s’est perdu de vue . . .
L’autre jour je faisais du shopping quand j’ai eu un flashback, je me suis
revue marcher avec lui dans les couloirs du centre commercial, je sentais sa
présence, c’était trippant. Et puis j’ai vu un type qui de loin lui ressemblait:
j’ai vraiment cru que c’était lui, j’ai failli tomber KO. Mais en fait c’était un
type que j’avais croisé au lycée, un has been de première, un type complète-
ment space qui se prend pour une rock star mais qui, en fait, est un loser
complet. Ça m’a vraiment fait flipper de me tromper à ce point.
Chaque fois que j’ai un coup de blues, c’est à Kevin que je pense. Ça me
donne un petit coup de boost de penser à lui. Je me dis que la life vaut d’être
vécue, qu’un jour on va se retrouver, et que ce sera le big love. On s’aimera
comme des fous et ce sera le plus parfait des happy end. En attendant, il faut
que je fasse attention au burn-out parce que ça c’est pas cool.

V Traduction d’un conte pour enfant

Traduire ce texte extrait de l’ouvrage “Give us a Smile, Cinderella”, qui est une
adaptation du conte pour enfants Cendrillon:

Once upon a time there was a young girl called Cinderella. She lived in a big
house with her mean old stepmother and two horrible stepsisters, Griselda
and Prunella.
They made poor Cinderella do all of the housework while they lazed about
eating cakes and sweets.
Griselda and Prunella were so lazy that they couldn’t even be bothered to
brush their teeth!
Their teeth went yellow, then green, then brown, and some of them even
fell out.
 Le Mot juste 19

The stepsisters often had toothache too, which made them even meaner.
Poor Cinderella worked hard all day. But no matter how tired she was, she
always brushed her teeth twice a day – once in the morning and again just
before bedtime.
When she went to sleep, Cinderella dreamed that she was married to a
handsome prince, lived in a beautiful castle and never had to do any house-
work ever.
As it happened, there was a handsome prince called Rupert in a castle not
very far away. His dad (the King) wanted Rupert to get married and he had
a brilliant idea!
“We’ll hold a ball!” he cried excitedly.
“What, a football?” asked Rupert.
“No! Not a football,” said the king. “A ball ball! A  big posh party. You’re
bound to find the girl of your dreams and we’ll have the wedding the week after!”
So that was settled.
A few days later the invitations to the royal ball were sent out.
“Look! There’s one for me!” gasped Cinderella.
“Yes, but you can’t go!” sneered Griselda.
“That’s right,” said Prunella, “you’ve got nothing to wear”.

COMMENTAIRES SUR LE TEXTE

Le texte appartient au genre particulier que constitue le conte pour enfants. Il

s’agit d’une réécriture d’un conte traditionnel (Cendrillon) qui fait appel à un
certain nombre de savoirs préalables liés au genre que constitue le conte (types
de personnages: prince/princesse, situations, formulations qui sont typiques de ce
genre de textes). On s’attend en outre à ce que le lecteur connaisse le conte originel
et possède une familiarité avec les personnages principaux, les situations rencon-
trées et la trame du récit, connaissances qui conditionnent évidemment les attentes
du lecteur. Le texte est constitué d’une narration (première partie du texte) suivie
d’un dialogue (deuxième partie du texte). Le narrateur est dans le texte source un
narrateur de type troisième personne (narrateur omniscient, omniprésent).
Signalons les différences typographiques que l’on observe entre les dialogues
anglais et français. En anglais, les guillemets doubles encadrent les interventions
des personnages tandis qu’en français il n’y a pas de guillemets, c’est un tiret
long (tiret cadratin) qui signale la prise de parole:

As it happened, there was a handsome prince called Rupert in a castle not

very far away. His dad (the King) wanted Rupert to get married and he had
a brilliant idea!
“We’ll hold a ball!” he cried excitedly.
“What, a football?” asked Rupert.
“No! Not a football,” said the king. “A ball ball! A  big posh party. You’re
bound to find the girl of your dreams and we’ll have the wedding the week after!”
20  Le Mot juste

Il se trouve qu’un prince charmant nommé Rodolphe habite vraiment dans un

château tout proche. Son père, le roi, voudrait qu’il se marie et il lui vient une
excellente idée! Il s’écrie avec enthousiasme:

– Nous allons donner un bal!

– Un bal . . . lon? demande Rodolphe.
– Mais non! Un bal, pas un ballon, répond le roi. Une grande soirée
dansante très chic! Tu y rencontreras sûrement la fille de tes rêves et
vous vous marierez la semaine d’après.

TRADUCTION PROPOSÉE

La traduction proposée, réalisée par Isabelle Montagnier, est tirée de l’ouvrage

Souris, Cendrillon! qui a été publié au Canada (Toronto) par les Editions Scholastic.

Je vais vous raconter l’histoire d’une jeune fille nommée Cendrillon. Elle
habite dans une grande maison, en compagnie de sa méchante belle-mère et
de ses deux horribles demi-sœurs, Gisèle et Prunelle.
Elles obligent la pauvre Cendrillon à faire tout le ménage tandis qu’elles
paressent et se gavent de gâteaux et de sucreries.
Gisèle et Prunelle sont si paresseuses qu’elles ne prennent même pas la
peine de se brosser les dents!
Leurs dents jaunissent, puis verdissent, brunissent, et certaines tombent.
Les deux sœurs ont souvent mal aux dents, ce qui les rend encore plus
désagréables.
La pauvre Cendrillon travaille jour et nuit. Mais même si elle est très
fatiguée, elle se brosse toujours les dents deux fois par jour: une fois le matin
et une fois juste avant d’aller se coucher.
La nuit, elle rêve qu’elle se marie avec un prince charmant, qu’elle habite
dans un magnifique château et qu’elle n’a plus à faire le ménage de toute sa vie.
Il se trouve qu’un prince charmant nommé Rodolphe habite vraiment dans
un château tout proche. Son père, le roi, voudrait qu’il se marie et il lui vient
une excellente idée! Il s’écrie avec enthousiasme:

– Nous allons donner un bal!

– Un bal . . . lon? demande Rodolphe.
– Mais non! Un bal, pas un ballon, répond le roi. Une grande soirée
dansante très chic! Tu y rencontreras sûrement la fille de tes rêves et
vous vous marierez la semaine d’après.

Tout est donc réglé.

Quelques jours plus tard, les invitations au gand bal royal arrivent.

– Regardez! Il y a une invitation pour moi s’exclame Cendrillon.

– Oui, mais tu ne peux pas y aller, se moque Gisèle.
– C’est vrai, renchérit Prunelle. Tu n’as rien à porter.
 Le Mot juste 21

COMMENTAIRE DE LA TRADUCTION PROPOSÉE

Temps verbaux  On notera que contrairement à ce que l’on observe dans le texte

source où le prétérit constitue le temps verbal le plus majoritairement utilisé dans
la narration, c’est pour le présent de narration que le traducteur a opté dans le texte
français. Le fait de ne pas utiliser les temps du passé dans la narration française va
de pair avec un certain nivellement en ce qui concerne l’aspect verbal. En effet, si le
passé simple ou le passé composé avaient été utilisés comme temps de la narration,
il aurait alors fallu alterner entre l’un de ces temps et l’imparfait pour distinguer
entre les différences aspectuelles qui apparaissent dans le texte source (passé simple
ou passé composé pour les action ponctuelles, imparfait pour les actions en train de
se produire et pour celles qui sont habituelles: aspects duratif et fréquentatif ).

Lexique  Le texte comprend un certain de noms propres qui correspondent aux

noms des personnages, contrairement à l’idée très répandue selon laquelle les
noms propres ne se traduisent pas. Il va ici de soi que le nom du personnage
“Cinderella” ne saurait être conservé tel quel en français: Cendrillon s’impose
ici comme la seule solution possible. Pour ce qui est des noms des deux horribles
demi-sœurs: “Griselda” et “Prunella”, on notera qu’ils ont été modifiés en Gisèle
et Prunelle, noms qui correspondent à des formes francisées (la terminaison en -e
pour les prénoms féminins français étant plus fréquente que la terminaison en -a).
On notera également que le prénom du prince “Rupert” a été modifié en Rodolphe
(du point de la fréquence, le prénom anglais “Rupert” est très peu usité en fran-
çais). En proposant Rodolphe, le traducteur fait donc le choix de proposer à ses
jeunes lecteurs un prénom plus facilement reconnaissable.
Notons que la francisation des noms propres est courante en ce qui concerne
les noms de personnages historiques (Christophe Colomb, Léonard de Vinci,
Galilée), les noms de lieux (Londres, Edimbourg, Pékin, Le Caire), les noms
d’auteurs ou de personnages de l’antiquité (Platon, Socrate, Euripide, Alceste,
etc) pour lesquels seules les formes établies vont pouvoir être utilisées.
Signalons que le très hyperonymique verbe “say” qui apparaît dans la dernière
phrase du dialogue (“That’s right,” said Prunella, “you’ve got nothing to wear.”)
correspond à un terme hyponymique (“renchérir”) dans la traduction française.
On observe ce phénomène (“say” en anglais →terme plus spécifique que le verbe
“dire” en français) dans de nombreuses traductions, particulièrement lorsque le
verbe “say” est répété.
Il est intéressant de noter que la structure “to go + adjectif de couleur” qui appa-
raît dans la phrase suivante:

Their teeth went yellow, then green, then brown, and some of them even
fell out.

. . . correspond en français à un verbe spécifique (jaunir, verdir, brunir):

Leurs dents jaunissent, puis verdissent, brunissent, et certaines tombent.

22  Le Mot juste

Procédés de traduction  Du point de vue des procédés de traduction, on notera la mod-

ulation (cf. Chapitre 2 sur les procédés de traduction) utilisée pour traduire la formula
“once upon a time” attendue en ouverture de conte. Plutôt que de proposer la formule
stéréotypée “il était une fois  un/une + nom” que l’on rencontre habituellement, le
traducteur opte pour “je vais vous raconter l’histoire d’une jeune fille” qui modifie en
outre la relation texte-narrateur, puisque la narration est prise en charge par un nar-
rateur première personne, contrairement à ce que l’on observait dans le texte source.

VI Traduction d’un extrait de roman, Deaf Sentence, David Lodge

David Lodge – Deaf Sentence

When they were back in the privacy of their bedroom, and while they were
restoring it to some kind of order, he apologised for the debacle of the night.
“You drink too much, Desmond”, she said. The “Desmond” was an index of
her displeasure. Even an acidly ironic “darling” was better than “Desmond”.
“It was Lionel’s fault, producing that bottle of malt”.
“You didn’t have to drink it. Anyway, it’s not just last night, it’s most nights.
You’re getting addicted”.
“Nonsense”.
“It’s not nonsense”.
“All right, I’ll prove it”, he said. “I won’t have a drop to drink today”.
She looked at him appraisingly. “You know we’re eating out tonight – at the
soi-disant French restaurant?”
“Yes”.
“And you won’t have any wine?”
“No”.
“Even if the food is not up to much?”
“Even if it’s horrible. As I confidently expect”.
She laughed. “Well, if you keep to your resolution, darling, I’ll be amazed – but
delighted.”

Analyse du texte

Identifier dans un premier temps la situation décrite dans cette scène: qui sont les
personnages, quelle relation les unit, à quels événements récents font-ils référence?
Identifier ensuite les difficultés linguistiques que pose le texte (difficultés lexicales, con-
structions susceptibles d’appeler une transposition ou une modulation (cf. Chapitre 2),
modifications grammaticales inévitables). Traduire dans un deuxième temps le texte
puis lire attentivement la traduction proposée ci-dessous. Comment les difficul-
tés identifiées ont-elles été abordées? Le texte comporte-t-il des changements qui
n’avaient pas été anticipés? Ces changements sont-ils justifiés ou superflus?.

Lorsqu’ils eurent tous les deux retrouvés l’intimité de leur chambre, et

tandis qu’ils remettaient un peu d’ordre à la pièce, il s’excusa pour la
débâcle de la nuit.
 Le Mot juste 23

“Tu bois trop, Desmond”, dit-elle. Ce “Desmond” était révélateur de son

5 mécontentement. Même un “chéri” prononcé avec une ironie mordante
était préférable à “Desmond”.
C’est la faute de Lionel, c’est lui qui a sorti cette bouteille de malt.
– Tu n’étais pas obligé d’en prendre. Et d’ailleurs, ce n’est pas
seulement hier soir, c’est presque tous les soirs. Ça devient une
10 habitude chez toi.
– Ridicule.
– Ce n’est pas ridicule.
– D’accord, je vais te le prouver, dit-il. Je ne boirai pas une seule goutte
d’alcool aujourd’hui.
15 Elle le dévisagea comme si elle cherchait à le tester. “Tu sais que nous
dînons dehors ce soir – à ce soi-disant restaurant français?”
– Oui.
– Et tu ne boiras pas de vin?
– Non.
20 – Même si la nourriture n’est pas à la hauteur?
– Même si elle est affreuse. Et je parie qu’elle le sera.
Elle éclata de rire. “Eh bien chéri, si tu tiens tes résolutions, je serai
surprise – mais ravie”.
La Vie en sourdine, traduction de Maurice et Yvonne Couturier

Commentaire linéaire de la traduction proposée

• Lorsqu’ils eurent tous les deux retrouvés (1): noter l’utilisation du passé anté-
rieur dans cette subordonnée, que la présence de la conjonction de temps
lorsque justifie (noter également que le passé simple est utilisé dans la propo-
sition principale: il s’excusa).
• intimité (1) correspond ici à privacy dans le TS, terme difficile à traduire en
français puisqu’il peut aussi correspondre à vie privée (right of privacy →
respect de la vie privée, invasion of privacy → atteinte à la vie privée), con-
fidentialité (privacy statement → déclaration de confidentialité). De la même
façon, private peut être traduit de diverses manières: a private detective →
un détective privé; a private message → un message personnel; I hate talk-
ing about private matters → je déteste parler des affaires intimes; a private
consultant → un consultant indépendant.
• chambre (2), pièce (3): noter que ces deux termes sont utilisés pour traduire
le terme bedroom – le premier met en avant le caractère spécifique de cet
espace, le second a une valeur plus générique.
24  Le Mot juste

Débâcle (3): debacle dans le TS, terme d’origine française dont le sens cor-
respond au sens figuré du terme français (en français, le sens propre est celui
de la rupture des glaces d’un cours d’eau). Le terme fiasco fonctionnerait
également bien dans ce contexte.
Ce “Desmond ”  (4): noter que l’article défini du TS est traduit par un
démonstratif.
Noter la collocation ironie mordante (5) qui est très idiomatique.
C’est lui qui . . . (7): noter la structure syntaxique (clivée).
soir (9): correspond à night dans le TS (cf. Saturday Night Fever, La Fièvre
du samedi soir).
Ça devient une habitude chez toi  (9–10): modulation de You’re getting
addicted.
Elle le dévisagea (15) – noter l’utilisation de ce verbe qui a le sens très spéci-
fique de regarder quelqu’un avec insistance et qui n’a pas d’équivalent en
anglais.
Comme si elle cherchait à le tester correspond à un seul terme dans le TS:
appraisingly.
Soi-disant is translated here by soi-disant!
Elle éclata de rire (22) pour she laughed, éclater de rire rend l’aspect incho-
atif du processus explicite (en anglais laugh peut-être inchoatif ou statif ).

Note
1 Although reward comes from the Old French word regarder, there is not a noun based
on that etymological root that means anything close to reward in French; with recom-
pense and prize there is an obvious equivalent term, the almost morphologically identi-
cal French nouns récompense and prix.

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