Sentence construction from French to English part 1
Some syntax pitfalls
NB. All the examples are genuine, mostly taken from the writing of mini-surveys in the second year,
which is why most of them are not technical. However, they apply to technical and scientific English
also.
1- Using “would” when there is no real condition. Example: If we start with a French sentence
that goes “ La raison pour laquelle ce tableau fut censuré aurait été le manque de pudeur”, we
could well produce, in English : “The reasons for this painting’s censureship would have been
lack of modesty”. Here we tend to imagine a condition that is not stated = it would have been
modesty if it had not been something else. But this is not the original meaning, which is
EITHER: “The reason for this painting’s censureship seems to have been its lack of
modesty”. In this case the conditional in fact expresses our own uncertainty, the fact that this
is only a possibility, so we cannot make a straightforward statement.
OR: another possibility is that we are only reporting what has been said, so we cannot make
a firm statement, but (as in indirect speech) we in fact mean “It is said that the reason for this
painting’s censureship is…”
An alternative is “It seems the reason for the censureship was …..”
2- To represent/ to correspond. Consider the French “Cela représente 50% de la population”.
The smaller number of verbs in French means that these two verbs have to be used with
several meanings. This is not so in English, which means that in the sentence: “This represents
50% of the population” should be in fact “This is 50% of the population”. Similarly with “to
correspond”. Instead of saying “ This corresponds to 30 women and 45 men”, you should say
what you mean which is probably nearer to “ There are 30 women and 45 men”.
3- Wish or intention. “People want that (?) games (?) have some benefits for them”. This is
simply UN grammatical. It is an imposed structure imported from French! The proper
structure for expressing what is wanted or hoped for someone is with a direct object and an
INFINITIVE: “People want games to have some benefit for them”. Consider “ I would like
you to do this” or “ He wanted me to write”: each time you must use the infinitive.
4- Lack of clarity. What is wrong with this sentence: “There is another communication satellite
which is sent into orbit from Cape Kennedy every month”?. This is an alternative: “Another
communication satellite rises into orbit from Cape Kennedy every month” – it is clearer
because in the first sentence nothing justifies the impersonal form.
5- Terrible ambiguity. Consider this other example: “For those of you who have children and
don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs”. (!) The comic effect comes from the fact that
we are not sure what “it” refers to. We should learn from this that in constructing sentences,
the proximity of word groups should not lead to misunderstanding. Word order is deeply
significant in English.
A sentence can be grammatically correct and still unclear. E.g. “This was an important
evolution, with respect to previous years” , we have no idea if we are talking of a slow change
( = evolution) or a trend, or real evolution (= biological and Darwinian). We have no idea if
this change, or development, was qualitative (as implied by the adjective) or quantitative.
We therefore rely heavily on context, but in fact the wrong choice of word is misleading.