Welcome to the world of the English teacher in France. I've been here a while and have been doing the job for a couple of decades. Over this time I have collected many examples of what I call "abuse of the dictionary": howlers I have found in pupils' homework which are generally due to the misuse of that useful tool - the English-French dictionary. My colleagues have begged me to share these gems with an wider audience, so that is the purpose of this blog.
To start the ball rolling, one from way back.
On being asked to describe a photo of a bride at a shotgun wedding, whose tight dress clearly showed that she was in the family way, one pupil wrote: She is loud speaker.
Remember, you are looking for a mistranslated French word.
The solution is in the comment posted below.
This one is easily explained by the pupil's failure to use his dictionary correctly. The French word "enceinte" can be both an adjective, meaning pregnant, and a noun meaning a loudspeaker, although it's actually a metonymy as it refers to the box which contains the loudspeakers (the "haut parleurs" ). By the way, the French also use the word "baffle" for loudspeaker – this is another metonymy as the baffle is the flat panel to which the speakers are fixed.
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