French self-study with a particular goal in mind (reading/writing)

June 9, 2023 8:27 AM

I would like to prepare for a test given as part of an Art History MA where you are given a 500-word passage about art in French and must translate it so as to prove that you can conduct research in that language. There is no speaking/listening involved. How would you plan out a self-study program to get to this result?

I took French 20+ years ago in high school, so I feel like I will be able to reactivate present, past, and future tense fairly easily. Because of the nature of this test, I would not have to worry too much about producing French (e.g. knowing what gender-ending words have). I am assuming that I will need help figuring out other verb tenses and developing an art-related vocabulary. How would you proceed in order to do this successfully and efficiently?

posted by xo to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

Best answer: French for Reading did the trick for me back in the day. IIRC, I ended up getting a better score on my French (which I hadn't studied since, like, fourth grade) than on my German (which I'd taken 2.5 years of in college only a couple years earlier).
posted by praemunire at 8:35 AM on June 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

What is the setting of the exam? Is it timed? Take home? Are you allowed a dictionary?

I was going to suggest something like French for Reading, but depending on the nature of the exam, it might be overkill. (It'd be overkill for a language exam in a math department, as it takes really minimal knowledge of French to read math in French as someone who can read English, your time would be better served just practicing reading EGA or something.) Is there a really standard work in French you can take a look at to see how far below the necessary level you are?
posted by hoyland at 8:51 AM on June 9, 2023

Best answer: My university offered a short in-person intensive course for exactly this purpose to current grad students as well as those from other universities and it worked great. I went from having no Spanish to being able to translate an academic text in Spanish with a dictionary over the course of a month or so.

After a brief review of grammar in the first week, we basically just proceeded by ... beginning to translate. We started with simple texts and moved up progressively in complexity. By around halfway through the course we were getting texts specific to our field of study so we could start building a subject-specific vocabulary/glossary of terms.

English has pulled so many academic terms from Latin roots that I found the exercises to be easier than I thought (with the caveat that I already spoke French). This leaves me in a weird place where I can translate work in my field in Spanish and read a 19th century novel well enough to get by, but can barely order a sandwich at the deli.

So, in short, I think 1) this isn't actually going to be that hard, 2) there may actually be a prep course for exactly this purpose available to you locally, and 3) the best way to prepare for this weirdly specific and possibly useless task is simply to practice doing this weirdly specific and possibly useless task.

With that in mind, for self-study, I would recommend A Short Course in Reading French because it is specifically designed to teach you to pass this kind of exam and includes a lot of practice translation passages to prepare you.
posted by sparkling at 9:07 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Math in French is one thing, but art history is quite another - some of the most convoluted and flowery French I've seen has been by art historians.

As a first step I'd explore what's available from your awarding institution - I'd hope they don't expect high-level French from you without teaching you some. Next, I'd practice the actual task - find some difficult art history, translate it, see how difficult it feels. Then I'd get someone to assess the result - ideally this would be done as part of your course, but specialist art history translators do exist and can be hired for this purpose.

Credentials: I am a translator, though don't work with art history. I guess you won't be held to full professional standards (I.e. produce a convincing English text that reflects the original and is a pleasure to read) but will be required to demonstrate that you understand.
posted by altolinguistic at 9:08 AM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I passed the French test for the MA on the first shot, although I think the administrator sort of let me slip through. I would establish a baseline first-- just sit with a fairly typical page of scholarly French in your subject and see how much you can work out from the context. Then use something like, yes, French For Reading and test yourself often and try to correct your work. Also, if they let you take it repeatedly with no stigma attaching to failure-- my program said this explicitly-- maybe just take it once to see what kind of passage they use so you have that to aim for.
posted by BibiRose at 9:19 AM on June 9, 2023

Best answer: I used the Sandberg French for Reading posted above, but it's basically out of print now for some reason. Folks that came after me in grad school used the more recent French for Reading and Transation by Shannon R Becker. It seems pretty good, and is available in paperback for not an insane price. (Also available in PDF from certain book sharing sites, if you want that access, you can memail me)
posted by dis_integration at 9:19 AM on June 9, 2023

As a first step I'd explore what's available from your awarding institution - I'd hope they don't expect high-level French from you without teaching you some.

It's standard for graduate education to require you to demonstrate proficiency in tasks required to complete the research you need to do. Like, oh, calculus for a physics graduate program. (The level of proficiency expected here will be miles away from what you'd need to do real translations of anything; you need to be able to read scholarly texts for understanding at a non-absurd speed.) And even if the option is available, in a short MA program, you don't want to be spending instruction time on languages.

I seem to recall that one of my set passages was from Foucault and I got through it fine with literally only a summer with the Sandberg (with its hilariously dated sociology focus).
posted by praemunire at 9:53 AM on June 9, 2023

Best answer: In this case, I would just look up significant pieces of art or significant art movements on wikipedia every day and select French in the drop down language options.

Or you could read a bunch of abstracts on Google scholar using relevant art terms. You can limit results by language in the search settings section.

This should help with some of the specialized vocabulary.

If there are terms you don't understand wordreference.com is the most reliable language dictionary I have found online.
posted by donut_princess at 6:19 PM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]