Translating centuries- urgent

French Language

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14/02/2013, 8:30

EmilyA

Joined on 16/03/2010
Posts 429

Translating centuries- urgent

Urgent help please! I have to do a translation for a "pupitre" of information, before it gets cobbled together by the tourist office and Google. Can someone remind me if eighteenth century in France should be the same or (as I have vaguely in my head) should be translated as nineteenth century in English?

Thanks

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14/02/2013, 9:09

Araucaria

Joined on 02/02/2009
Sunny Cantal
Posts 550

Re: Translating centuries- urgent

It's the same as in the UK. So dates between 1800 and 1899 are in the dix-neuvième siècle.

That's because the years 1 to 99 AD were the first century.

As far as I remember, the only confusing bit is that it is common in Italy to do it differently: effectively down there they use a word we might translate as (eg) "the fourteen hundreds" to mean the fifteenth century. And of course you can do that in English too.

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14/02/2013, 9:41

woolybanana

Joined on 27/08/2007
Aix-en-Issart, Pas de Calais
Posts 12,895

Re: Translating centuries- urgent

Does this mean that the French are a century behind? One has wondered.

Too thick for a PhD!

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14/02/2013, 19:47

Araucaria

Joined on 02/02/2009
Sunny Cantal
Posts 550

Re: Translating centuries- urgent

woolybanana wrote:
Does this mean that the French are a century behind? One has wondered.

And everyone in the world except the Italians, then.

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15/02/2013, 15:33

Judith

Joined on 01/02/2006
Posts 2,435

Re: Translating centuries- urgent

Yes, I remember this quirk with the Italian nomenclature of centuries when I was cataloging books for an art gallery - fortunately one of the curators helped me out, as along with funny dating systems, I knew very little Italian ... almost every other language I had to work in I could cope with but Italians and their centuries - no way!

Judith
ex W1, via 47 and 11 and now [just] in 34, equidistant from Carcassonne, Narbonne and Béziers, where I hope we'll finally stay!!

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15/02/2013, 18:13

Loiseau

Joined on 23/08/2004
London/ & now EX-Vendée
Posts 2,821

Re: Translating centuries- urgent

Emily, I just remembered while working on a translation recently that the French usually abbreviate a century in Roman figures (XVIIIe siècle), where we would use Arabic figures (18th century). Probably not very relevant as you are translating towards English, but I thought I would throw it into the mix.

Angela

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15/02/2013, 18:41

EmilyA

Joined on 16/03/2010
Posts 429

Re: Translating centuries- urgent

Yes thanks I have done that.
Thanks to all, obviously remembered it wrongly from school. Should I blame the teacher, it was only fifty years ago?

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15/02/2013, 19:21

Araucaria

Joined on 02/02/2009
Sunny Cantal
Posts 550

Re: Translating centuries- urgent

EmilyA wrote:
Yes thanks I have done that. Thanks to all, obviously remembered it wrongly from school. Should I blame the teacher, it was only fifty years ago?

Yes, you should. I really blame my French teacher for not making a better job of teaching me French: after all, it was only just a little more than 50 years ago.

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