Welcome to the deck on translation skills for your AQA GCSE French exam. Translation is a key part of your assessment, testing your vocabulary, grammar, and understanding of both French and English. In this deck, we'll cover strategies for translating from French into English, and from English into French, focusing on common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Let's start with translating from French into English. The first and most important step is to read the entire passage to understand its general meaning, or gist. Then, tackle it sentence by sentence. For each sentence, identify the subject and the main verb. This will give you the core meaning. Finally, translate the details, but always aim for what sounds natural and correct in English, rather than a word-for-word copy.

A common trap in French translation is 'faux amis', or 'false friends'. These are words that look similar in English but have different meanings. For example, 'actuellement' in French does not mean 'actually', it means 'currently'. And a 'librairie' is a bookshop, not a library.