In France what Department (English = County) is named after a major sea area and what is the Literal English translation?
and will surprise you. I always understood its something different .But I learnt something today

At a guess: Finisterre. That would be Latin in origin, from finis 'the end' and terra 'the land'. If you go any further, you're in the sea

No Fred Not the answer I'm looking for

Hi Bedstor,
The department is Manche. La Manche (the sleeve) is the French name for the English Channel.

Correct dg ...1 little point the translation of Manche is not sleeve but Handle on Google Translate tools
original French Wiki article

Same article but "in English"

And the clincher?

quote:

The English Channel (50) is a French department, in the Basse-Normandie area

PS It does look a distinctive handle sort of shape
And Cherbourg is the Main Port in this region

Both of you are right. "Manche" has ...7 different meanings in French.
But because in this case "Manche" is feminin (LA) and not masculin (LE),... " Sleeve" would be the answer. "Manche" as a "handle" is masculin "LE manche"

The Wiki article in French [Bedstor's link] explains that La Manche is so called because it is like a sleeve. Handles have nothing to do with it ,except that 'English Channel' is its handle in Britain [handle= English slang for 'name' or 'title']

Anyway,as Mozart says, le manche [masculine]is a handle.La manche [feminine] is a sleeve.

Bedstor,

French Departments

and The English Channel/La Manche

Sometimes translation services come up with misleading words.

Yes dg I'm aware of that. They grab the first definition automatically off the list No AI


if you have a working knowledge of the language then you can flag if there are several interpretations and the correct one is pointed at

That's one of the great strengths of this forum getting the correct information in the end if the Pointer says several different thinga
In this Case Mozart noted what was the variable and Highlighted it Thank you

The gender part of French(and some other Languages) always trips me up

quote:

Sometimes translation services come up with misleading words.

Quite right especially when the same word has different meanings. The search engine goes beseurk, it's not capable to seize the logical context of the sentence .

I remember, once, I used one of those S.E for a French-English translation about pruning a "bonzai plant".
Well,.... I was supposed to water the "Nuclear plant " every day. That was the last time I used one of those.

quote:

Originally posted by bedstor:

The gender part of French(and some other Languages) always trips me up

Don't worry about it. One of us ( ), just occasionally, thinks twice over le and la livre ! (And that's after speaking the language for fifty years and living in France. Honestly, the sooner we have the euro in Britain the better: there'll be no more books and pounds to think twice about )

"Quite right especially when the same word has different meanings. The search engine goes beseurk, it's not capable to seize the logical context of the sentence."

I spent some time mmonitoring the development of translation software some years ago (I don't mean the free stufff on ther Web, I'm talking about professional packages like Systran and Logos). Back then, people would try to trip up the programme by writing sentences such as "The magician turned the car into a driveway."

Of course, the most famous example was the translation of "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" into Russian. The result was then translated back into English and came out as "Good vodka - but the meat's a bit tough"! Oh, O.K. maybe that one was made up