Translating a document into English: 8 mistakes to avoid

A misread date, an “eventually” that means the opposite of what you intended, a French acronym left unexplained: it is rarely the big sentences that cause trouble, but the details. For the full step-by-step process, see our article Translating a document from French into English: the method. Here we focus on what tends to go wrong.

1. Falling for false friends

False friends look alike in both languages but mean different things. In a business document they change the message without anyone noticing on a first read.

Example: « Nous pourrons éventuellement livrer sous huit jours » rendered as “We will eventually deliver within a week” promises a delivery that will arrive sooner or later, whereas the French simply expressed a possibility.

2. Keeping French formats

Writing conventions differ between the two languages, and this is where the costliest errors hide.

• Dates: 03/04/2025 reads as 3 April in the UK and March 4 in the US. Spell out the month: 3 April 2025 or April 3, 2025.
• Numbers: the French decimal comma becomes a point, and the space separating groups of digits becomes a comma. 1 234,56 becomes 1,234.56. In a price table, a mix-up can completely distort an amount.
• Currency: the symbol goes before the amount (€54).
• Punctuation: no space before colons, question marks or exclamation marks; “ ” instead of « ».
• Capitals: days, months, languages and nationalities take one (Monday, June, French).
• Times: 14 h 30 becomes 2.30 pm in the UK, 2:30 p.m. in the US, or 14:30 in a technical context.

3. Mixing British and American English

Colour or color, organise or organize, centre or center, holiday or vacation, CV or résumé: neither variant is wrong, but mixing them is. Choose according to your reader (a partner in London, a client in Chicago) and stick to it throughout. When proofreading, a spellchecker set to the right variant quickly flags inconsistencies.

4. Mishandling terms with no equivalent

SAS, SARL, Kbis, URSSAF, CDI, bac+5, grande école: these French realities have no exact counterpart in the English-speaking world. Two opposite mistakes lie in wait:

• Inventing a misleading equivalent: translating SARL as “Ltd” suggests a company incorporated under English law.
• Leaving the acronym bare: your reader has no idea what a Kbis is.

Good practice: keep the original term and add a brief explanation the first time it appears, for instance “SAS (French simplified joint-stock company)” or “CDI (permanent employment contract)”.

Consistent terminology

If « devis » becomes “quote” on page 2, it should not turn into “estimate” on page 5. Upload the whole document at once rather than pasting it in chunks: the translation then has the full context, and you review a consistent whole.

5. Starting from the wrong file

• A draft version: every change made after translation costs you twice, in time and in consistency.
• A scanned PDF: without a text layer, Manuce cannot process it. Go back to the original Word file or a PDF exported from your software.
• Pasting into an online translator: tables, headings and formatting disappear, and everything has to be rebuilt by hand.

Manuce accepts Word, PDF with a text layer, PowerPoint, Excel, plain text, Markdown, HTML, RTF and CSV up to 40 MB, and returns the file with its original layout. For PDFs specifically, see Translating a PDF into English without losing its layout.

6. Confusing professional and certified translation

A birth certificate, diploma, court judgment or Kbis extract intended for a foreign authority often requires a sworn translation by a translator accredited to a French court of appeal (traducteur expert près une cour d'appel). Manuce does not provide sworn or certified translation: for these documents, contact an accredited translator directly. Our guide When is a sworn translation mandatory? will help you decide.

7. Picking the wrong level

An internal memo you just need to understand, a presentation sent to a client and a high-stakes document do not call for the same care. Manuce offers three levels: Essential (accurate and readable, straight away), Professional (ready to send, handled by the subject specialist) and Premium (our most advanced engine, followed by a cross-review).

Worked example: a 3,000-word document (around 8 pages) from French into English. These are the prices shown on the quote on the day of writing:

At Essential level the calculation gives €17.40, rounded up to the next euro, i.e. €18. VAT not applicable, article 293 B du CGI. If you add German and Spanish to the same document at Professional level, the 30% three-language discount brings the total down from €162 to €114. Full details are on the Pricing page, and our article Getting a quote for translation into English explains how to read each line.

A general document (letter, presentation, memo, internal procedure) goes to Atlas, our specialist for general documents. A contract goes to Thémis, a balance sheet to Métis: the full list is on the Specialists page.

8. Sending without proofreading

Before you send the English version, five checks will spare you most unpleasant surprises:

1. Proper names, company names and job titles: are they correct and identical throughout?
2. Figures, dates and amounts: compare them line by line with the original.
3. French acronyms: are they explained on first use?
4. British or American English: is the choice consistent from start to finish?
5. Layout: text length changes from one language to another, so check table cells, text boxes and slides.

The simplest way to judge before paying: upload your file to the translation workspace, review the quote based on the actual word count and read the free translated extract. You will see at once whether the dates, figures and tone are right.