Excerpt from: Document Translation
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| July 28, 2006 | | If you have studied a foreign language with similarities to English, your teacher surely told you to beware of false friends. Here’s why. | |
“False
friends” are pairs of words in two languages that appear to be similar, but
differ in meaning. For example, in French “attendre” means “to wait” – quite
different from the English sense of “to attend an event.” Confusion could
obviously ensue from that particular word combination! False friends are treacherous for
language learners because they are so tempting to use, but can lead to
problematic misunderstanding.
Many Spanish
words look or sound similar to English words, but some are of course false
friends, or falsos amigos. Gerald Erichsen of About.com has compiled a list of the most frequent confusing pairs, and it makes for
interesting reading whether you speak Spanish or not. For instance, en absoluto
means “not at all” or “absolutely not” – exactly the opposite of what you would
expect it to mean.
Even
reasonably fluent language speakers can be confused by false friends, and poorly
translated documents and websites abound in them. That’s why it’s essential to
use highly qualified translators from a
professional
translation company for your
important business, medical and legal translation needs.
Betty
Carlson | | |
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