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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Fish and Ships: 15 of the most bizarre French – English translations

No doubt, translating between French and English is a tough job, but these translators must have had absolutely terrible days at work.

Published: 15 February 2017 11:42 CET
Fish and Ships: 15 of the most bizarre French - English translations
Photo: @ohheyyjen/instagram

Some of these are just odd, other are plain wrong, and some translators have given up completely and gone home. 

“Piece of the butcher anyone?”

1. Ze classic Engleesh fish and ships

redamidjek/ Instagram

2. How to confuse your children

Both the French and English are wrong here, this whole image is just a mess. 

@MBlake482/ Twitter

3. The best shirts are made inside a real Turkey

A classic Google translate error here, when Turquie (the country) is mistaken for dinde (the bird).

4. In France, toothpaste is basically your personal assistant.

Ok, ok “émail” is a French word for enamel, but it made us chuckle anyway. 

Charlotte Pines/ Instagram

5. Tuck into a delicious “piece of the butcher” at this restaurant

Or perhaps a “silly chocolate pear” is more to your taste? We've pointed to our favourites, but there's plenty more to find on the menu.  

Sent in by reader Wendy Bond Brookes

6. Wine from a stranger or wine that is “more strange”?

This shopkeeper fell victim to the étranger double meaning of both “stranger” and “foreign”.

@ohheyyjen/instagram

7. Always check your translations over before you go ahead and print it on your window

Little known fact: goats made entirely of cheese and “campinge deer” are said to roam countryside in some parts of France. 

Gideon/Flickr

8. These little frogs are having a terrible time of it in the park

If the English translation wasn't weird enough already, why do the exclamation marks get translated to question marks?? Is even the writer even questioning what he's talking about ??

Simon Doggett/Flickr

9. Keep up the hard work, room.

“Room under construction” could have been a better alternative. 

Andrew Ross/Flickr

10. No hygienic napkins here

Whoever wrote this has got their serviettes (napkins) and serviettes hygéniques (sanitary towels) in a mix up. 

ElPadawan/Flickr

You'd have thought we'd be on safe ground with numbers, but even they seem to have some translators in a twist.  

11. This pasta dish takes an extra 20 minutes if you cook it in French.

porkchopsammich/ Reddit

12. While this tent takes five minutes less time to set up in French. 

expldplastic/ Imgur

13. And this 24-port ethernet switch only has 16 ports for French speakers.

 iammandalore/ Reddit

Some translators decided to just pack it all in and call it a day…

14. A quick and simple way to translate text is to just write the name of the language in front of it.

Works like a charm. 

Smacksaw/ Imgur

15. Or even just repeating “French translation” over and over makes the words appear by magic

How did this get past anyone in the office? 

@DohMtl/ Twitter

By Rose Trigg

For members

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

Published: 30 November 2021 13:04 CET
Updated: 4 December 2021 17:47 CET
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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