The Practice of French-English Translation in Chad:A Case Study of Students from Pascal Yoadimnadji High School and the University of Doba.

Abstract

In earlier times, Chad, a French-speaking country, cooperated with multinational oil companies, leading to growing demand for English as a business communication medium. For English learners in Chad, both oral and written translation are essential for obtaining better job opportunities with oil companies. French-English translation is included in the secondary school curriculum in Chad. Although there are no professional training institutions, educators have proactively trained English learners in translation to help bridge communication gaps through local translation services.
This study examines the types of errors that occur in French–English translation practice at the high school and university levels in Chad. Data were collected from the scripts of 240 high school and university students from the University of Doba. The scripts were analyzed using Nida and Taber’s (1969) formal/dynamic equivalence framework.
The results highlight the complexity of French–English translation at the academic level, which is largely influenced by lexical and grammatical errors originating from the source text (ST) register, as well as variations in the participants’ translations. The findings also reveal an unfavorable sociolinguistic environment and inadequate foundational training for EFL learners, both of which negatively impact the practice of French–English translation in Chad.
These findings significantly contribute to understanding how error fossilization leads to deviations from Standard English, ultimately resulting in the emergence of New Englishes. The results underscore the need for education policymakers in Chad to develop more robust and specialized training programs to ensure that English–French translators from Chad remain competitive in the translation industry, despite the growing challenge posed by machine translation, which increasingly threatens to replace certain aspects of human translation.