Parallel text FR-EN

Reading newspaper articles about the same events/subjects in newspapers of both your A and C languages offers you the chance to see how similar ideas are expressed independently in two languages without interference from the other language. This will be very useful in helping to avoid language interference (calque) when you interpret.

This activity and its usefulness in translation was first described in Vinay & Darbelnet’s seminal Comparative Stylistics of French and English (1.4.2 p44 )

Exercise

1. Find newspaper articles on the same subject in two or more different languages (one of which should be your mother tongue)
2. Highlight passages where the same information is conveyed in the different articles
3. Make a note of the equivalent versions for future reference
Gilets jaunes : le maintien de l’ordre à l’épreuve des blessés graves
Le nombre des blessés graves depuis le début du mouvement le 17 novembre dernier ouvre le débat sur la stratégie de maintien de l’ordre, et notamment l’usage du lanceur de balles (LBD) et des grenades GLI-F41 par les forces de l’ordre2.   Chaque samedi depuis l’ Acte I des Gilets jaunes8 le 17 novembre, qui a engendré une fronde inédite et de grandes violences, le nombre de blessés ne cesse de s’amplifier. Deux mille chez les manifestants, 1 000 parmi les forces de l’ordre selon le ministère de l’Intérieur. A l’IGPN, la « police des polices »3 saisie des enquêtes les plus graves, on dénombrait 81 procédures judiciaires au 15 janvier, dont 31 concernant des blessures graves. Parmi elles, 13 à la suite de tirs de lanceurs de balles de défense (LBD)4, 18 provoquées par des grenades GLI ou GMD ou par la force physique. Cette réalité judiciaire pourrait être en dessous de la réalité. La recension sur le réseau social Twitter par David Dufresne, un journaliste spécialiste du maintien de l’ordre, compte 308 signalements documentés par images, dont une centaine de blessés atteints à la tête. Parmi eux, une quinzaine de personnes ont perdu un œil. Il a également comptabilisé quatre mains arrachées5. Les blessures mutilantes6, quelle que soit l’issue judiciaire des enquêtes en cours, sont essentiellement causées par deux armes : d’une part le lanceur de balles de défense (LBD), qui tire des projectiles de caoutchouc de 40 mm7 de diamètre d’une portée de 10 à 40 mètres à la puissance de 160 joules, soit 10 fois la puissance d’un paintball, et d’autre part la grenade GLI-F4, qui contient 25 g de TNT.   Ces deux armes sont aujourd’hui en ligne de mire. Jeudi, Jacques Toubon, le Défenseur des Droits, a réitéré sa demande au gouvernement d’interdiction du LBD, un an après avoir remis un rapport à l’Assemblée nationale la préconisant déjà. Un rapport resté sans effet. « Le LBD est susceptible de blesser grièvement un manifestant, d’engager la responsabilité du tireur », écrivait-il. Quant à la grenade GLI-F4, un collectif d’avocats – dont Mes Raphaël Kempf, Aïnoha Pascual et Arié Alimi – tous défenseurs de blessés par cette grenade dite « assourdissante », a écrit en novembre au ministre de l’Intérieur pour exiger son retrait à cause des blessures irréversibles qu’elle peut engendrer.   …. « Quand le ministre de l’Intérieur Castaner parle, on a l’impression d’entendre le ministre des policiers, et non celui des citoyens. Il y a un défaut d’équilibre. Nous parlons de « maintien de l’ordre », alors que les Anglo-Saxons emploient le terme de « gestion de foule », ce qui n’engendre pas le même type de doctrine », poursuit Sébastian Roché.  
https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/gilets-jaunes-le-maintien-de-l-ordre-a-l-epreuve-des-blesses-graves-18-01-2019-7991910.php  
French police weapons under scrutiny after gilets jaunes injuries – 30th Jan 2019  
The French government is under growing pressure to review police2 use of explosive weapons1 against civilians after serious injuries were reported during gilets jaunes street demonstrations, including people alleged to have lost eyes and to have had their hands and feet mutilated.   France’s legal advisory body, the council of state, will on Wednesday examine an urgent request by the French Human Rights League and the CGT trade union to ban police from using a form of rubber-bullet launcher4 in which ball-shaped projectiles are shot out of specialised handheld launchers. France’s rights ombudsman has long warned they are dangerous and carry “disproportionate risk”. Lawyers have also petitioned the government to ban so-called “sting-ball” grenades4, which contain 25g of TNT high-explosive. France is the only European country where crowd-control police2 use such powerful grenades, which deliver an explosion of small rubber balls7 that creates a stinging effect as well as launching an additional load of teargas. The grenades create a deafening effect that has been likened to the sound of an aircraft taking off. France’s centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, is facing renewed calls to ban such weapons after Jérôme Rodrigues, a high-profile member of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests)8 demonstrators was hit in the eye on Saturday in Paris. He is said by his lawyer to have been disabled for life. Rights groups say Rodrigues’s case is the tip of the iceberg. Lawyers estimate that as many as 17 people have lost an eye because of the police’s use of such weapons since the start of the street demonstrations, while at least three have lost their hands5 and others have been left with their face or limbs mutilated6. Injuries have happened at demonstrations in Paris and other cities, including Bordeaux and Nantes. Aïnoha Pascual, a Paris lawyer representing several of the injured people, including one person who had part of his hand ripped off, and another left partially deaf and with facial injuries, said never in recent history had so many serious injuries been seen during protests. She said using the sting-ball grenades was akin to using military weapons against a civilian population. “These weapons are a very real problem. In the 1980s, if one person was hit in the eye at a demonstration there would be a huge reaction, yet now there is no reaction from government.” Dominique, 54, a childcare worker from rural Normandy, described how she saw her sons seriously wounded. One of them had his hand ripped off by, she believes, a sting-ball grenade4 on the Champs Élysées in Paris in November during a family day out to support the gilets jaunes demonstrations…. The government has not commented on specific allegations or given any breakdown of injuries. The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, on Tuesday said only that 1,900 people had been injured in all circumstances since the start of the gilets jaunes demonstrations in November. Lawyers and journalists attempting to compile lists of police weapon injuries estimate at least 100 people have been wounded. A total of 101 investigations have been opened by France’s police watchdog3

  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/30/french-police-tactics-scrutiny-gilets-jaunes-injuries-paris?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Comments on the examples

lanceur de balles (LBD) et des grenades GLI-F41explosive weapons1These acronyms are familiar to French readers, not to English readers so the author takes a generic description
forces de l’ordre2police
crowd control police2
The terms are so different here the difference is mentioned in the article!
l’IGPN, la « police des polices3France’s police watchdog3The French explains an acronym familiar in France. The English drops it as irrelevant and leaves only the explanation.
lanceurs de balles de défense (LBD)4rubber-bullet launcher4
so-called “sting-ball” grenade4
The first EN is a paraphrase, the second a translation but requires inverted commas for English readers who will never have heard of it.
quatre mains arrachées5have lost their hands5This is more common in EN that « ripped off« which you see elsewhere in this article. 
blessures mutilantes6others have been left with their face or limbs mutilated6verb in English replaces the noun in French
qui tire des projectiles de caoutchouc de 40 mm7which deliver an explosion of small rubber balls7same thing described differently
Gilets jaunes8gilets jaunes (yellow vests)8transcoding + explanation