Translation does not always mean transformation. Sometimes the two languages line up, and the right move is to leave the structure alone. That is the domain of the conservation procedures: borrowing, calque and literal translation — the three ways of keeping something of the source inside the target text.
They are the easiest procedures to use and the easiest to misuse, because the line between a legitimate conservation and a lazy one is thin.
Borrowing: importing the word
Borrowing keeps the foreign word as it stands, sometimes with a small spelling adjustment. It is the procedure used when the target language has no term, or when the foreign word carries something the local one does not.
English into French:
- email — although courriel exists and is standard in Quebec
- week-end, now fully naturalised and written with a hyphen
- aquaplaning (alongside aquaplanage)
French into English: baguette, déjà-vu, cul-de-sac, rendez-vous.
A borrowing that has settled in loses its italics and takes local grammar: un week-end, des week-ends. A borrowing that is still foreign keeps its italics. Deciding which is which is a question of usage, and dictionaries are the arbiter.
The trap nobody warns you about: false anglicisms
French has created a set of English-looking words that do not exist in English. Translating them as they stand produces sentences no English speaker can parse:
- le footing ↔ jogging
- un brushing ↔ a blow-dry
- un smoking ↔ a dinner jacket (UK) / a tuxedo (US)
- le baby-foot ↔ table football / foosball
- un relooking ↔ a makeover
- un parking ↔ a car park / a parking lot
These are the mirror image of false friends: a word that looks like a borrowing because it already is one, and is nonetheless wrong in the source language it came from.
Calque: copying the construction
A calque imports the structure rather than the word: each element is translated, and the assembly is kept.
- skyscraper → gratte-ciel (the English came first, and French built its own compound on the same model)
- honeymoon → lune de miel
- to sleep like a baby ↔ dormir comme un bébé
- armed to the teeth ↔ armé jusqu'aux dents
Calques succeed when the internal logic of the image is transparent in both languages — which is why they work so well on figurative expressions and so badly on idioms, whose logic is precisely not transparent.
Semantic calque: the invisible kind
A word can also borrow a meaning rather than a form. The word already exists in French; English contact gives it a new sense:
- réaliser meaning to understand, from to realise
- supporter meaning to support a team, from to support
- opportunité meaning a business opportunity, from opportunity
- digital for numérique, still contested
These are invisible because nothing looks foreign. Some have been accepted for decades; others still mark a text as translated. The test is the same as for any usage question: frequency in real French, not logic.
Literal translation: word for word, when it works
When the syntax of the two languages happens to coincide, the straight version is the right one.
- What time is it? ↔ Quelle heure est-il ?
- He had always dreamed of becoming an artist. ↔ Il avait toujours rêvé de devenir artiste.
- according to the American President ↔ selon le président américain
Vinay and Darbelnet were explicit on this point: literal translation is a legitimate procedure, not a failure to translate. When it produces a correct, idiomatic sentence with the same meaning and register, no further intervention is required — and rewriting it for the sake of looking like a translator is its own kind of error.
It becomes illegitimate the moment it produces a sentence that is grammatical but not idiomatic. That is the test, and it is the only one: read the result aloud and ask whether anyone would say it.
The trap that shadows all three: false friends
Resemblance is the enemy here. A word that looks familiar is exactly the word you fail to check.
- actuellement = currently, not actually
- assister à = to attend, not to assist; and attendre = to wait, not to attend
- une affaire = a matter, a business deal, not an affair
- blesser = to injure, not to bless
- une librairie = a bookshop; a library is une bibliothèque
- éventuellement = possibly, not eventually
- achever = to complete, and also to finish off; not to achieve
The more dangerous kind: partial false friends
Some words overlap in one sense and diverge in another, which makes them far harder to catch:
- important — in French it also means large in size or quantity (une somme importante)
- sensible — French sensitive, English sensible is raisonnable
- évidence — French obviousness, English evidence is les preuves
- prétendre — French to claim, English to pretend is faire semblant
The first group produces obvious nonsense and is caught on rereading. The second produces plausible sentences that are simply untrue, which is why partial false friends do more damage than complete ones.
Conclusion
Conservation procedures show how close two related languages can run, and how easily that closeness misleads. Borrowing, calque and literal translation are real tools, not shortcuts — and each of them has a failure mode that looks exactly like a success.
The safeguard is always the same: a form that resembles the source is not thereby correct. It has to be verified in the target language, on its own terms.