One 'false friend' after another...
Jul. 26th, 2009 10:20 amFrench and English share a number of cognates, which are words that have a common etymological origin, though in practical terms, they are words that have a similar "look," as in the (American) English theater and the French theatre.
The trick is to distinguish between "true cognates" (les vrai amis, as the French call them), and "false cognates," which are pairs of words with a similar look, but vastly different meanings.
I was halfway through typing "nomination" as a translation for its cognate in French when I decided to back off and look it up, just for laughs.
Good choice.
In French the word means, mostly, "an appointment" (in the sense of appointing someone to a position), which is quite different from the English meaning, where being "nominated" for a position means being proposed to fill said position.
* * * When clients ask for partial deliveries, I resolve to give them whatever I have at the time they want the delivery, speckles and all (though I do perform a spell check). And then like an alcoholic falling off the wagon, I proceed to put a medium spit shine on the product before shipping it out the door.
It's probably good for client retention (not to mention my ego), but I just killed nearly two hours making two "partial deliveries," which is two hours I could have spent translating, without significantly increasing despeckling time at the end.
Oh, well... if I wanted eggs in my beer, I'd be in some other line of work.
Cheers...
The trick is to distinguish between "true cognates" (les vrai amis, as the French call them), and "false cognates," which are pairs of words with a similar look, but vastly different meanings.
I was halfway through typing "nomination" as a translation for its cognate in French when I decided to back off and look it up, just for laughs.
Good choice.
In French the word means, mostly, "an appointment" (in the sense of appointing someone to a position), which is quite different from the English meaning, where being "nominated" for a position means being proposed to fill said position.
It's probably good for client retention (not to mention my ego), but I just killed nearly two hours making two "partial deliveries," which is two hours I could have spent translating, without significantly increasing despeckling time at the end.
Oh, well... if I wanted eggs in my beer, I'd be in some other line of work.
Cheers...