French Translation

Text expansion, and what comes with it

The first thing anyone notices in translation into French is that the text grows markedly longer. Relations that Turkish builds with a single suffix call for a preposition, an article or an auxiliary construction in French, and the same content is stated in more words. This expansion is not merely a question of appearance. Because a certified translation is expected to resemble the source document in layout, bilingual tables and the areas beneath a seal have to be recalculated. Rearranging the line breaks, rather than squeezing the form, is the right approach.

The second difficulty is the choice of mood. French legal writing uses a distinct mood wherever it expresses a condition or a requirement, and if the Turkish patterns meaning “in the event that…” or “must be…” are not rendered with that mood, the text loses its binding force and reads as a statement of intent. This is the error most often corrected in contract translation.

The third is register. French administrative correspondence works with a more ceremonial set of formulas than Turkish is used to, and the opening and closing formulas of letters and petitions are all but immovable fixtures. They are not translated word for word but replaced by the equivalent formula in the target language. Carrying the courteous closing of a Turkish petition across word by word strips the text of its formality and pushes it into an odd familiarity.

The invisible rules of typographic tradition

French typesetting follows a punctuation regime that differs from the Turkish one and is applied scrupulously in official documents. These details cost the reader nothing, but their absence leaves the impression that the text was put together carelessly.

Demand from education and administration

The largest share of demand comes from higher education applications. Besides the diploma and the academic transcript, the pre-registration file calls for a motivation letter and a statement of intent; these are not document translation but translation of register, and they should come from the same hand as the official papers. The second cluster is residence formalities: proof of address, source of income, health insurance and the housing contract. The third is family law, where marriage files, divorce judgments and custody arrangements are used before local town halls and courts. In tourism, aviation and cosmetics, technical and promotional texts make up a steady volume.

Contracting and infrastructure work with French-speaking countries on the African continent is a substantial item in its own right. These files bring tender specifications, progress payment reports, letters of guarantee and occupational health procedures. The terminology stays close to French practice, but in the sections that refer to local legislation the references in the source text are preserved unchanged.

In healthcare, demand for prescriptions, test results and operation reports never stops. Abbreviations of Turkish origin are spelled out in these texts, while laboratory units and reference ranges are carried across in the form they take on the source document, without conversion.

Institution names and abbreviations

The names of Turkish institutions are not translated but explained: the original name is kept and an equivalent describing what the institution does is placed beside it. Abbreviations take the same route, because the French administration treats a document as incomplete when it cannot recognise an abbreviation. With the names of universities, faculties and departments, however, the basis is the equivalent built directly from Turkish rather than the English version used in official correspondence; translation in two stages loses a little information at each step, and what emerges at the end is a name whose link to the source document has been broken.

Name order and date format

On French administrative forms the surname is usually written entirely in capitals and placed before the given name. Translation keeps the order of the source document, but marks which word is the surname so that no doubt is left; otherwise a two-word Turkish surname is taken for a second given name. Since there is a separate field for a surname held before marriage, the corresponding entry in the civil register goes there.

Dates run day, month name, year, with the month in lower case and an ordinal mark added on the first day of the month. In dates given in figures the day comes first. For documents where you have named the receiving institution you can generate a quote instantly and compare the unit prices, which vary according to which way the translation runs and the delivery option chosen.

The account below summarises typical practice; the format the institution accepts should be confirmed at the outset. Where you are in any doubt, it is best to put the question to the institution before you apply.