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## Key Points

- Third-person literary fiction → **Passé Simple** for narrative events
- First-person contemporary voice → Often **Passé Composé** (feels more immediate/spoken)
- Deliberately avant-garde → May mix or use present tense throughout
- After verbs of wanting, fearing, doubting: *je veux qu'il vienne*
- After impersonal expressions: *il faut que*, *il est important que*
- After *bien que, quoique, pour que, avant que, à moins que*
- In relative clauses with superlatives or negatives: *le seul qui soit*
- After *que* in negative or interrogative sentences with certain verbs
- *On* used for impersonal/collective: *On entendait* instead of *Il entendait* or passive
- Nominalization: French prose often turns verbal ideas into nouns
- Long relative clauses extending a sentence gracefully
- Past participle agreement with *avoir*: *les lettres qu'il a écrites* (not *écrit*)

French Literary Translation Reference

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The Literary Tense System — The Most Important Decision

French literary prose uses a tense system that does not exist in English. Getting this wrong is the single most immediate marker of a non-literary translation.

Passé Simple (Passé Historique) — il alla, elle dit, ils virent The literary past tense. Used in all serious French fiction, literary prose, and formal narrative. Never used in speech — only in written narrative. This is the tense of Flaubert, Camus, Proust, Duras.

Passé Composé — il est allé, elle a dit The spoken past tense. Used in dialogue, first-person contemporary narration, and some modern literary styles that deliberately break convention.

The Decision: What tense register is this translation in?

• Third-person literary fiction → Passé Simple for narrative events
• First-person contemporary voice → Often Passé Composé (feels more immediate/spoken)
• Deliberately avant-garde → May mix or use present tense throughout

Once decided, apply with absolute consistency. Mixing passé simple and passé composé in third-person narration is a red flag for non-native writing.

Imparfait — il allait, elle disait Background, description, habitual action, ongoing states — same as Spanish imperfecto. Used alongside passé simple. Never use passé simple where imparfait is required.

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The T-V Distinction: Tu vs. Vous

French T-V distinction is socially intricate and narratively rich.

Relationship	Register
Close friends, family, children, lovers	tu
Strangers, professionals, formal relationships	vous
Two strangers in urban context (modern France)	vous default
Colleagues (depends on workplace culture)	Varies — establish and maintain
Romantic: early acquaintance → intimacy	Often shifts from vous to tu — mark this

The moment a character shifts from vous to tu is one of the most emotionally charged moments in French social interaction. If the English original has a comparable moment of intimacy or formality shift, recreate it with the T-V shift.

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The Subjunctive

French subjunctive is required in contexts English ignores:

• After verbs of wanting, fearing, doubting: je veux qu'il vienne
• After impersonal expressions: il faut que, il est important que
• After bien que, quoique, pour que, avant que, à moins que
• In relative clauses with superlatives or negatives: le seul qui soit
• After que in negative or interrogative sentences with certain verbs

Audit: Every que + verb construction must be checked for subjunctive requirement.

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Rhythm & The French Sentence

French prose has a different musicality than English. Key differences:

Inversion for style: French inverts subject-verb in certain constructions for rhythm and emphasis, especially after dialogue tags and in formal prose: "Je ne sais pas," dit-il — not il dit. The inverted dialogue tag is standard in literary French. Never write "Je ne sais pas," il dit — this is a translationese tell.

The long sentence: French literary prose (especially 19th and early 20th century) uses extremely long sentences with multiple subordinate clauses. This is not a failure of editing — it is a feature. Don't break up French-tradition long sentences into English- length pieces.

Ne... pas: Colloquial spoken French often drops ne: je sais pas not je ne sais pas. In dialogue for informal characters, dropping ne is natural and correct. In formal narration, keep the full negation. Decide by register and apply consistently.

Rhythm tools:

• On used for impersonal/collective: On entendait instead of Il entendait or passive
• Nominalization: French prose often turns verbal ideas into nouns
• Long relative clauses extending a sentence gracefully

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Gender and Agreement

French grammatical gender affects everything — nouns, all adjectives, past participles with avoir when the direct object precedes. Full agreement audit required on every passage.

Particular traps:

• Past participle agreement with avoir: les lettres qu'il a écrites (not écrit)
• Adjective agreement across long sentences
• Collective nouns (gender may be unexpected)
• Abstract nouns: la vérité, la mort, le courage — gender must be internalized

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French Literary Prose Traditions

19th century: Long, sculpted sentences; passé simple; high formality; Flaubert's precision; Zola's naturalism; Hugo's grandeur

Early 20th: Proust's infinite subordination and digression; Gide's journals; Colette's sensory precision

Mid 20th: Camus's clean minimalism (note: deliberate — imparfait/passé simple, short declarative in first person); Sartre; Beauvoir; the nouveau roman (Duras, Robbe-Grillet)

Contemporary: Annie Ernaux (spare, almost journalistic intimacy); Patrick Modiano (repetition, fog, memory); Michel Houellebecq (flat, clinical, transgressive)

Know which tradition the source text connects to and find the French literary lineage that corresponds.

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Common Translationese Traps in French

• Passé composé in literary narration: The tell of a non-literary translator
• Missing dialogue tag inversion: dit-il not il dit after speech
• Calqued English idioms: "It's raining cats and dogs" → "Il pleut des cordes" (not des chats et des chiens)
• False cognates: actuellement = currently (not actually); sensible = sensitive; éventuellement = possibly (not eventually); librairie = bookshop (not library)
• Dropping the ne in narration: Only in colloquial dialogue, not literary prose
• Overusing être en train de: English progressive (was running) → French often just uses imparfait (courait), not était en train de courir
• Anglicized punctuation: French uses « » guillemets for dialogue, not " " (note: space before « and after » in French typography)