French learners' survey

Users of the French Linguistics site are invited to take part in a quick French learners' survey. The survey asks you about which aspects of learning French you find easy and difficult and will only take you a minute or two. The results of the survey will be used to improve the web site.

Site updates this week

A number of small updates will be applied to the site over the coming week (5th-9th July), including updates to some of the dictionary data plus modifications to the software that works "behind the scenes" to bring you the dictionary plus other parts of the site.

This means that if you're one of those fortunate to be spending their time this week using the web site rather than basking on a sun-swept beach, the site may occasionally be down for a minute or two. However, such outages are expected to be brief.

Translation mailing list

If you or your company has ongoing translation needs, you are encouraged to subscribe to this site's translation mailing list. To make things easier, the subscription tool is currently being displayed on the main dictionary page.

Those subscribed to the mailing list will receive periodic announcements about reductions and offers available from the site's translation service, along with other translation news.

Please note that translations are provided not only between French and English, but between various language pairs. In general, most translation requirements can be met; the best thing to do is contact the site's author for some no-strings advice.

Reminder about accents on the automatic French translation page

The automatic French translation system can be extremely useful in giving you the gist of a particular text. However, the system often does not give as good a result as it could because of missing accents on the text that uesrs enter into the system. When you are inputting a French text to be translated into English, it is important to try and enter the accents that appear on letters as accurately as possible.

If you are not using a French keyboard (or a keyboard designed for other languages that make regular use of accented letters), then typing accents can be tricky. To make life a bit easier, the translation system actually understands a few accent shortcuts, so that you can type the accents with an everyday UK or US keyboard. The shortcuts are as follows:

- to type an acute or grave accent (a slanting line above the letter), type either a slash (/) or backslash (\) after the vowel, to match the direction in which the accent slopes (i.e. slash for an acute, backslash for a grave)
- for a circumflex (a "hat" above the vowel), type a hat symbol (^) after the vowel
- for a diaeresis (the "two dots" that appear above a vowel letter, to indicate that it is pronounced as a separate vowel to the letter next to it), type a quote symbol (") after the vowel letter
- to type a cedilla (a line or hook appearing on the bottom of a letter "c", to indicate that it is pronounced as a [s] sound), put a comma after the c (c, or C,)

Recommended legal and business dictionaries

Many people working with French do so in a business environment. Perhaps you have to liaise with the French head office of the company you work for. Or perhaps your UK business is in the process of negociating a deal with another French company. Or maybe your Canadian business wishes to address both English-speaking and French-speaking customers. Finally, if you are a professional translator like myself, you probably get asked to translate business documents on a regular basis.

I've included on the French Linguistics site some information about three French business and legal dictionaries that I recommend for those working with business and/or legal documents in French and English. The first, the Harrap's, has good coverage of a variety of subfields such as marketing, commerce and finance, and covers a range of compound expressions along with clearly set out examples. It also contains auxiliary information on writing a CV and covering letter in French, plus various other business letters.

The second, a more compact work, will be of most use to those translating into their native language and, although it has slightly less coverage of compound expressions than the Harrap's, can be a good source of ideas for translating more "general" vocabulary encountered in business documents.

The third, Dahl's Law Dictionary, is a more specialist dictionary in specifically the legal field. It differs in approach from the other two in that many of its entries are encyclopaedic in nature, a valuable approach in legal translation where differences in legal systems mean that choosing the most appropriate translation can require a more detailed understanding of the concepts in question in the two countries.

If you use any other resources when working with French business texts that you think should be included in this list, then comments are welcome.

Updates to the French dictionary and translation examples search

The site's French dictionary has been updated today. As usual, the update includes various corrections and expansions to entries, plus various new words. Many of the corrections have been made on the basis of users' feedback, and you are reminded that feedback on individual entries is always available via the feedback link that appears next to each one.

Users of the dictionary may also wish to know about an update to the translation examples search engine that was made earlier this week. You may now search for complete phrases as well as individual words. The phrase search is still a little primitive in that only exact matches will be found. However, it is hoped that this new feature will still be useful in getting ideas on how to translate a particular phrase or combination of words, and is expected to be improved in the future. It is still recommended that, when searching, you enter the word or phrase in question without accents.

French language discussion forum reinstated

The French language discussion forum has been re-instated today after being temporarily disabled yesterday. The forum was disabled following various spam posts that were posted on this forum plus other forums by a bogus pharmaceuticals company. The situation is being monitored and I apologise to users for the inconvenience.

Users are reminded to be vigilent when using this and other forums. The French Linguistics site does not condone unauthorised spam and advertising. Although parts of the site are funded through advertising in order to offer a free service to users, only well-known, reputable advertising services are used, and advertisements are always placed in designated parts of the site. No legitimate advertising material will ever be placed inside forum postings. Should any other spam and advertising posts slip through the net, you are urged not to click on any links or pictures inside forum postings that appear to be advertising material.