French to English

Translation

Technology

Whether you’re expanding to new markets or maintaining an existing customer base, clear, accurate technical documents, including product documentation, research and white papers, presentation and training materials, FAQs, knowledge bases, and other support documents, can make the difference between success and failure. I’ve been communicating technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences for 25 years.

Media/publishing

News, books, film and tv are both culturally specific and time-sensitive. Careful translations of this kind of content can open a new world of readers, viewers, and customers. I’ll use my experience as a newspaper reporter, magazine and journal editor, website editor and producer, and content strategist to create culturally appropriate content that seems like it was created in English from scratch. Translating your media and publishing content, including news and magazine articles, books, blog posts, newsletters, webinars, press releases, and interviews, is one of the easiest ways to engage with your English-speaking audience.

Certified documents

When you need a translation of an important document like a birth certificate or an academic transcript, you want to feel confident that the final document will be accurate and delivered on-time. I provide a certificate of accuracy for every translated document.
Image: Nexflix
Image: Philippe Mercurio

Examples of my work

History of the Microprocessor by Philippe Darche (Wiley/ISTE, forthcoming)

“The 72nd Hole,” Losers (Netflix/Topic Studios, 2019)

Power: A Concept for Information and Communication Science by Olivier Dupont (Wiley-ISTE, 2019)

Procyon Shattered by Philippe Mercurio (nogartha, 2018)

See my portfolio

to

translate

/transˈleɪt,trɑːnsˈleɪt,tranzˈleɪt,trɑːnzˈleɪt/

Verb: To render of the meaning of a word or text into another language.

Example: Michele Rosen translated his book so that he could gain a bigger readership.

FAQ

Answers

What does a translator need to know about a project before beginning in order to create a successful translation?
The more information you provide the translator about the context, audience, and purpose of your text, the more likely you are to receive a translation that meets your needs.

If you think of translation as a word for word process, it may seem sufficient to provide the translator with a set of phrases, strings, or terms to translate. However, translating text out of context can lead to misunderstandings and mistranslations.

Ideally, translators will have the original document available, whether it is a book, a game, or a film. This allows the translator to make sure the final translation is appropriate for the context.

What is your View of machine translation?
Machine translation raises the hackles of many translators, but it really is just a technological tool like any other. Businesses and organizations in every sector are facing the challenge of automation. Compared to other kinds of activities, automation through machine translation is extremely challenging because of the complexity and subtlety of human language. However, translators and editors can use machine translation to speed up the process of creating documents. This process should always be managed by an experienced translator or post-editor to make sure the final translation is accurate and appropriate for the context and the audience.
How do you evaluate whether machine translation will be a helpful tool for a particular project?
The quality of machine translation has improved significantly in the past 3-4 years. The results from an MT engine such as DeepL can be quite good for translations from languages where there are large corpuses of existing translations, such as French to English.

In addition to language pair, MT quality varies by subject matter (news vs. marketing), audience, and purpose.There are also related issues including staff skills and privacy/legal issues that can determined whether MT is appropriate for a given situation.

Any machine translation should be verified with a human translator if accuracy is important. MT engines don’t understand the text the produce, so they can’t know whether a particular translation is appropriate for a particular context or audience. They also generate unexpected errors (such as translating M. Le Maire as the Mayor, when M. (Bruno) Le Maire is a French politician.