French Help!!
 

hey, im working on a small paragraph over a movie that i watched in class. I was wondering if any native or fluent speakers could traslate this for me. Im in French 1, in college, and was hoping someone could give me a few pointers on the best way to say what i wrote. Im not here to completley rape you of your knowledge, i would like to learn too, so if anyone wants to give me a few tips, and help me traslated it, i would love it.

EDIT: yes, i know babble fish and those types of programs, but they are inacurate, and make the wordings look like a 2 year old.


"La Haine, after looking it up on the internet I realized that it means hatred or the hate. I thought this was a fitting title because of all the violence and hatred for different groups, police, the skinheads, and common people. I enjoyed friendship of the 3 main characters. I enjoyed their humor. This movie was dark, and showed a lot of hate. The end was sad, but made a good point. Overall I enjoyed it very much. "

You are going to end up with "la haine" after looking it up I realised it meant "la haine". You may want to rephrase it to say something like "After looking up the verb (or phrase) "La haine", I realised it means severe bad feeling or something similar - I'm not sure how you want to write it, without ending up with something recursive. The english equivalent sentence would be "I looked up hatred on the internet and found it meant hatred" - it doesn't sound very good! Have a think about how it may be better to phrase it and I'll come back and help you translate. I'm English, but speak French fairly well.

I'm not sure you're in the market for a whole new approach, but I would recommend it for future assignments... the problems you run into (like the one that cowudders mentioned) usually come from trying to say things in English and then translate them into French. Unfortunately, that's not how languages work. Stuff always gets lost in the translation. A better approach might be to keep a list of over-arching themes/topics that you want to talk about (something like: the significance of 'la haine' in the story, differences between people, characters, humor, the moral of the story) and then attack each topic by coming up with something to say about it in French. They're not expecting you to know how to say things perfectly in French; they are expecting you to use the French that you've learned in class. So use the vocabulary that you know from the practice conversations you have in class (which I presume most French teachers still require of their students) and apply it to those themes/topics.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Honestly, in order to use Babelfish correctly, you need to know how french sentences are worded, moreso how the words are places in the sentence.

I know from Spanish that, "Yo Tengo una boligrafo." mean in english, "I have a ballpoint pen." Though, it is more complex than this. It is more like, "I myself have a ballpoint pen." I know that this is a small, non-complex example, but it shows my point. You must know how the sentences are worded to get the full effect of Babelfish.

-SF

Well if i could just get this translated.


La Haine was a good movie. I enjoyed the dark theme of it. The three main characters were really intresting, they were also funny, i enjoyed their friendship. I thought that the hatred in this movie was well expressed through the skinheads, currupt police, and the ending. The ending was sad but I think it made a good point about the pettyness of hatred for others. I still enjoyed the movie.

This is like the 3rd or 4th time IckUber has asked tfp for a translation of his french homework. Mind you, not homework HELP, but the actual full translation.

so.

Oh man, IckUber. I thought that name sounded familiar. It WAS you who was asking for help back when I was rookie!

le sigh, how about a little help please?

ok so i had a friend help me write this, he has been in french for years, i am afraid its either not good enough, or its too good, if you catch my drift.


La Haine était un bon film. J'ai apprécié le thème foncé de lui. Les trois caractères principaux étaient vraiment intéressants, ils étaient également drôles, j'ai apprécié leur amitié. J'ai pensé que la haine dans ce film a été bien exprimée par les skinheads, police corrompue, et la fin. La fin était triste mais je pense qu'elle a fait un point positif ausujet du pettiness de la haine pour d'autres. J'appréciais toujours le film.

Pettiness is still in that translated passage man. That is not french. Use something like 'sans importance' or 'frivole' (frivolous).

Maybe say:
La fin était triste mais je pense qu'elle a fait un point positif ausujet de l'idee frivole de la haine pour d'autres.

IckUber--your french is pretty good. Why do you keep asking for other people to do your french homework? That translation you just posted is word-for-word what you get when you stick your english passage you posted above into babelfish.

The translation you posted is the result of automatic, computer-assisted translation, which is not good. This method only works when you want to check out specific words or very short passages. Anything beyond that gets too "word-for-word" and usually doesn't take the context into account. My native language is French and I've studied and worked in translation, but since I'm also a teacher now my desire to see you work it out by yourself prevails.

You might want to check out other possible translations for:

- theme fonce
- caracteres principaux
- pettiness (not even translated)

(I'm aware that there are no accents, but I'm using a Japanese computer with no French options... sorry).

The rest is pretty decent for a level 1 French student. BTW, I loved "La Haine".

IckUber:
I think you're generally on the right track, though there are a few english-isms in your sentence structure, which bring about the "direct translation" feel of the paragraph (as already pointed out by Bob Biter)... such as the film being spoken about in the past tense. Sure, it "was" a good film...but it still is, right? So, basically you want to say that you watched it, and you like it. Not that it was a good film (leading someone to wonder whether it still is).

Unless, of course, you're supposed to construct the entire paragraph in the passé simple tense. In which case, nevermind what I've said :)

One tip of advice:
When you have to write something in French, never ever write it in English first. You'll only trouble yourself more trying to translate it. Write it in what French you know and it will be much easier and you'll get better and better at it.

1. "foncé" can only be said about colors. In this case, the word youre looking for is "sombre": "J'y ai apprécié le thème sombre du film."

2. Characters = "personnages", not "caractères": Les trois personnages principaux étaient vraiment..."

The rest is acceptable. Find another word for pettiness. Theres no direct translation for it in the french language. "futilité" is a close enough translation though.

French is actually my first language. English is my second. Heh, Ive actually learned english through video games and the internet!