Translation s'il vous plait/por favor :-)

Francis Nugent Dixon effendi at wanadoo.fr
Fri Mar 23 09:24:01 EDT 2012


Hi from Beautiful Brittany,

Klaus, I would hate to be pedantic, but I can't miss
adding my 2 cents.

Dictionnaries exist to clearly define the meaning
of a word or phrase in another language. But the
translations, based upon the etymology of the terms
in these languages are often betrayed by the personal
interpretations of the users. If we can try and forget the
environment of our computer translation (files, folders,
disk drives, et tutti quanti), we can try to home in on
best best translation available for a specific language.

The French language (to my knowledge) lacks the
precise equivalent of the English "into" (which
means "from the outside of ... to the inside of ...").
So may we fall into the trap of personal interpretation !

The French "a" denotes location only, but gives little
information concerning the direction, and even less
about the subtleties of "inside" or "outside".
I find it to be the worst possible translation.

The French "dans" means "in" or at best "inside",
and has no implication of the 'into" I show above.
However, I find it a better solution than "a".

The French "sur" implies "lying on top of" and
certainly does not imply "inside". Much depends on
the personal interpretation. As a long-standing
"nit-picker" I would never use this.

The French "vers" means "in the direction of", which
I find to be acceptable in the translation you request,
because it simply skips over the notion "inside", (but
nevertheless implies it (The idea of copying a file to
the "outside" of a folder would be nonsense !).
But then again, this can be personal interpretation.

These comments in no way undermine the scope of the
French language, which can be so powerful in many areas.

.. et a la fin de l'envoi, je touche .!  (French Fencing term)

-Francis




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