THE GRADUATED COURSE OF TRANSLATION FROM. ENGLISH INTO FRENCH PART I. THE JUNIOR COURSE EDITED BY PROF. CH. CASSAL, LL.D. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, AND ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE, GREENWICH and PROF. THÉODORE KARCHER, LL.B. ROYAL MILITARY ACADEMY, WOOLWICH, AND DEPARTMENT OF ARTILLERY STUDIES Former and Present Examiners in the University of London, LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1875 2757. f. 2 All rights reserved PREFACE. OUR long and varied experience in our double capacity of Professors and Examiners has taught us the necessity of beginning very early, even with the youngest students, the practice of translating from English into French. The 'Exercises' which are given in almost all grammars, and which usually contain nothing but detached and unmeaning sentences, have no interest for the pupils, and leave scarcely any impression on their memory. Hence it comes that so many of them are utterly unable to render into tolerable French the simplest English passage, even after five or six years of study and worry. In our own classes our custom has invariably been to give our pupils, almost from the beginning, easy but interesting English anecdotes and facts to translate into French. This method answers well as far as we are concerned, and the constant success with which it meets induces us to publish the materials which we have used, both in teaching and examining. They are set in gradual order, the gradation being governed by the difficulties they contain. Our experience has also shown us the useless, or rather injurious, character of footnotes, not to mention the really hurtful custom which prevails in grammatical Exercise |