French technical translations

EHLION's French translations are the best way of giving your materials exactly the right style and tone for the French market. Our professional language team includes qualified translators who specialize in translating content from and into French. And if you want the reassurance of knowing that each and every accent in your documents is in the right place, then EHLION's DTP & foreign language typesetting service is an excellent choice. Our experienced DTP team will handle the typography, page layout and graphic design of your files and work together with our specialized French translators and proofreaders to get every accent exactly right. Do you need an interpreter to fluently translate from French into English or from English into French in a negotiation? We can put together a tailor-made interpreting solution to meet your needs – and we'll choose the best interpreter to match your specific situation

French| français | [fʀɑ̃sε]

So, what does French sound like?

Would you like to hear a sample of someone speaking it? Click play to listen to the audio file and get an initial impression of how spoken French sounds. Listen carefully to the intonation of our French native speaker and you will soon see why French is often considered to be the most beautiful and melodious of the Romance languages. Admittedly, however, the nasal sounds used in French pronunciation can make it challenging for non-native speakers to achieve fluency.

This audio sample is taken from the thoughts on religion ("Les Pensées") written by French mathematician, physicist, author and Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Published posthumously, it was compiled from the copious notes and fragments of work in progress left behind after Pascal’s early death. The completed work published in 1670 was entitled "Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects”. The original manuscript consisted of thousands of handwritten notes tied together in dozens of bundles.

Did you know...?

In the 18th century, French was the universal diplomatic language spoken by members of the aristocracy and in intellectual circles throughout much of Europe. Frederick the Great, King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, a proponent of enlightened absolutism known by his detractors as “Old Fritz”, was fluent in both written and spoken French. He drew much of his inspiration from the writings of Voltaire, which he naturally read in the original French version. He also kept up a regular flow of correspondence with the leading French philosophers and enlightened thinkers of the day – all in French, of course. This did not prevent Frederick II from falling out with Voltaire during the latter’s visit to Prussia. The Prussian monarch was a highly educated man who wrote numerous philosophical texts, many of which, as you might have guessed, were written in French. Among other things he wrote an essay on German literature, subtitled “a moral dialog”, in which he didn’t spare his criticism of contemporary authors. For those who are interested, the letters exchanged by Frederick II and Voltaire have been digitized as part of the Gutenberg library project. In which language? French of course! Here they are: Voltaire’s correspondence with the King of Prussia

FACT FILE French

French belongs to the Romance branch of the Indo-European family of languages that also includes Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian It is one of the world’s major languages, spoken by around 220 million people including approximately 110 million native speakers. It is spoken in more than 50 countries and is one of the official languages of France, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium and numerous African countries. Moreover, French is one of the official languages of the EU and the United Nations (UN).

In France, an honorable society known as the Académie française created in 1635, oversees the purity of the French language. It was originally formed to unify French grammar and orthography. This institution is also responsible for limiting the “excessive use” of English loanwords. In contrast to similar organizations in other European countries, the Académie française imposes rules concerning the “correct use” of the French language. For example, it was the Académie française that decreed the use of the term "ordinateur" for “computer”, even though the English term was readily accepted in other countries. This is all the more surprising given that “computer” is a word derived from the Latin verb "computare". The pronunciation and spelling of the few English words accepted by this prestigious institution have been heavily adapted to the French tongue: examples include "rosbif" for roast beef and "bouledogue" for bulldog. The dictionary published by the Académie française has been the definitive work on the French language since 1694. The latest edition, published in 2014, is the 9th.