Old French Manuals and the Gems of Information Found Within

[Combloc]

I don't speak or read French but I've been translating manuals in my spare time for a while now. You really learn a lot of interesting things about an artifact when you read source documents. For example, I'm currently finishing up a 1964 edition of a training manual on the Mle 1950 pistol published by the French Armed Forces Technical Directorate of Weapons and Instruction. It goes into minute detail about the pistol's mechanisms and explains built in safeties that I've never seen in English. There is information in some of these manuals that is entirely unknown in English publications. Last year, I translated a parts catalog about the Mle 1950 and there was a section in there detailing the transitioning of nomenclature from the older French system to the new NATO system. So, this particular parts catalog was a transitional publication including both numbering systems. As such, it is an important research document that allows you to cross-reference the two systems. Absolutely FASCINATING stuff!!! When I translate a document, I try to reproduce it in a visually similar way to the original. It's impossible to make it EXACTLY like the original but I have fun trying to recreate the general form, font, etc. and I try to keep in the spirit of it. As I translate the various manuals, I can definitely see a shift in French technical language through the 1950's as it "modernized". Translating earlier manuals such as the "provisional" MAS 44 manual can be laborious as the descriptive words are not the same ones used in the language now. So, the newer the manual, the easier the translation. Anyway, I have loads of fun doing this kind of stuff and I always learn a lot in the process. It's like a treasure hunt and I ALWAYS find surprises that have been lost to time only to resurface when someone such as myself takes the time to pick up that long forgotten publication and take the time to read it. That's how the base of knowledge about these artifacts we care for grows!

A few pictures of the parts catalog I did last year:

 

[Threeband]

Perhaps you should share what you're doing with Ian McCollum over at Forgotten Weapons.