FRENCH TRANSLATION The French language spoken by about 128 million people worldwide and is the official language for 25 Countries. Standardization of the French language has been aided in modern times by more widespread education and by the mass media. When working with French translation software you will need to understand there can be different French dialects, Standard French (also called Parisian), Canadian French, African French, Cajun French and a few more. All of the translation software below can do these different dialects because even though there are some differences, the more professional versions of the translation software allow you to add terms to a customer dictionary and modify the translation to the dialect you need. If you speak English you already know about dialects, think of the difference between American English and British English. You can easily pick up a paper in either country and understand it but some words will be a little different. Typing French: When translating the French language you will notice many of the French letters have accent marks over them. If you need to type in French you can change the set up of Microsoft Windows to allow you to type these accents, check out the language settings under your control panel for more information. Translation software is an excellent solution for communicating in French, from personal to the most technical business translations. FRENCH TRANSLATION SOFTWARE Systran - French Translation Software Systran has been a leader in the development of translation technology for over 30 years. Professionally Translate documents, PDF, Word, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, web pages, Email, Chat and more. This translation software is used by the U.S. Government, FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, NASA, Fedex, Google, Commission of the European Communities, United Nations and more. Translate 36 language pairs. Learn More - Systran Products LEC - French Translation Software LEC's Translate translation software by is an outstanding source for quality, affordable language translation software. This translation software translates documents, websites, e-mails and more, to/from English and the major European and Asian languages. LEC desktop software is used by more than 3 million customers worldwide to quickly and economically translate projects. Learn More - LEC Products         Learn more about French Language and Translation: French Language and Gender All nouns in the French language have a gender, either feminine or masculine. gender in French has little to do with sex (male or female) but more to do with the category. Therefore, inanimate objects such as tables and desks are categorized as either masculine or feminine (there is no neuter gender in French grammar). The terms 'masculine' and 'feminine' really mean nothing more than 'noun class A' and 'noun class B'. Here are some endings of words that will help you decide which gender a noun is. Nouns ending in -age and -ment are usually masculine, as are nouns ending with a consonant. Nouns ending in -ure, -sion, -tion, -ence, -ance, -té, and -ette are usually feminine. There are exceptions to rules but the gender patterns can help you to figure out the gender of many French nouns. By learning about 40 word endings you should be able to identify thousands of nouns without memorizing them. Just remember, gender can be very important when you are doing English to French and French to English translation. Masculine vs. Feminine In English, grammatical gender is based on biology and is only relevant for pronouns (he, she, it) and possessive determiners (his, her, its). Gender in French, on the other hand, affects all nouns, pronouns, adjectives and articles. A noun's gender is indicated by the article that precedes it. Masculine nouns are preceded by le and feminine nouns by la. The use of articles in French is more widespread than in English. French Accents In the French language you will find three accents over the vowels, the acute (´) over e, the grave (`) over a and e, and the circumflex (ˆ) over a, e, i, o, and u. An accent may serve to indicate the pronunciation of a vowel, distinguish homonyms, or mark the discarding of the letter s from a word. A cedilla placed below the letter c (ç) signals that the c is to be pronounced as s. Ordinarily, c is pronounced as k before a, o, u, or a consonant and as s before e and i. Typing in French If you need to type these French characters with your regular keyboard you can do it easily using ASCII characters, look at this Type French Keyboard Accents chart to learn more. There are also accents in MS Word, Keyboard layouts and software that help you to type in french. French Dialects   The French language has changed little since the Middle French period. Standardization of the French language has been aided in modern times by more widespread education and by the mass media. You will notice there are some differences in a dialect such as "Canadian French", which is spoken in the Quebec area of Canada. Translation software will use standard French from France. There are differences but with the more advanced versions of the translation software we carry you can add terms to a customer dictionary and modify the translation to the dialect you need. English - French Words that have different meanings The word "Sale" is used every day in the English language but in France the word "sale" means 'dirty'. There are many other words that have a completely different meaning. Thankfully, with the French being so educated, they're unlikely to take too much offense, but try to be careful, do a little research. We are looking for a source either on the web or a book that may list these words to share with our customer, so please let us know if there is one and we missed it.