Ntc's Dictionary of French Faux Pas/Common Errors of English-Speakers in French and How to Avoid Them (National Textbook Language Dictionaries)

Translation work, whether it be from French-to-English or English-to-French, presents extraordinary difficulties due to the ever-evolving usage of both languages. Thus, a translator (teacher, student, traveler) encounters many pitfalls when navigating the terrain of idiomatic language. Such "faux pas" (lit., "false steps") may prove to be embarrassing, at the least. "NTC's Dictionary of French Faux Pas" sets out to eliminate blunders from translations and speech as the barriers are broached between English and French.

This dictionary is organized alphabetically: words in English form the left column on each page and their equivalencies in French form the right column on the same page. The main English word and phrase headings are in boldface; the subheadings of related English words and phrases and their facing translations in French are in small regular typeface. While a bit hard on the eyes, nonetheless, this arrangement is very handy for memorization purposes; one needs merely to hold one's palm over one side of the page and then recite the translations.

Interspersed throughout the dictionary are flagged "faux amis" (lit., "false friends"). These "faux amis" are arranged alphabetically, thus somewhat disrupting the two-column arrangement. These words present special pitfalls in that they ". . . may look similar in French and English but have totally different meanings. For example, "la monnaie" means change and not "money" " (iii). Other examples are: "partir" ("to depart"), "lecture" [f] ("reading"), "fabrique" [f] ("factory"), and "éventuellement" ("possibly"). ["Possiblement" is not French.] I would like this dictionary more if there were also a glossary of these "faux amis" because the misuse of these words is particularly egregious in translation and speech. Another useful feature that is not present in this dictionary would be an index of the French words and phrases with page numbers for their English equivalencies.

Overall, "NTC's Dictionary of French Faux Pas" is a very good supplement to standard French-English/English-French desk dictionaries, such as "The Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary" (2nd ed.), "Harrap's Shorter French Dictionary," "HarperCollins Robert French Unabridged Dictionary" (5th ed.) and "Larousse French-English English-French Dictionary" [Unabridged]. This book is not only an idiomatic English-French dictionary but also a usage manual, and, as such, is well worth memorizing.