Arabic to French: a possessive can identify a different kind of gender
Son and sa do not mean his and her respectively
Arabic third-person possessive suffixes can distinguish a male owner from a female owner. French son and sa instead depend primarily on the grammatical properties of the possessed noun, with a further rule before a feminine noun beginning with a vowel sound. Transferring the gender of the Arabic owner directly into the French possessive is therefore unreliable.
The French phrase sa voiture can mean his car or her car. Son livre can likewise refer to a book belonging to a man or a woman. If an Arabic message contrasts two owners, the French possessive alone may not preserve the identifying information. A name or a fuller ownership expression can keep the distinction where it matters. First establish which object belongs to whom, then choose the French noun and its required determiner. Do not interpret a change from son to sa as evidence that the owner has changed.
French address encodes familiarity differently from Arabic
Arabic second-person forms can identify gender and number. French tu and vous involve a different set of decisions: tu normally addresses one person familiarly, while vous can address several people or one person with social distance or respect. The absence of an Arabic plural ending is not a sufficient reason to choose tu.
For an Arabic request to a newly contacted customer, determine the relationship rather than reproduce the source pronoun’s singular number mechanically. Conversely, a family conversation may warrant tu without any loss of respect intended by the Arabic speaker. French second-person reference does not distinguish the addressee’s gender through tu or vous itself. Other agreement in the sentence can still depend on the participant. Keep singular respectful vous separate from actual plural reference when checking adjectives and participles, so a polite message does not accidentally become an instruction to a group.
An elapsed period can describe something still happening
An Arabic sentence describing how long someone has worked or lived somewhere may report a continuing situation. French commonly uses a present-tense construction with depuis for that meaning. J’habite ici depuis deux ans describes residence continuing now, rather than residence confined to a completed past period.
When translating an Arabic duration statement, ask whether the activity continues at the reference time. A completed stay, an ongoing stay, and an event that happened a certain time ago require different French expressions. A past date or a number of years does not alone justify a past-tense target clause. Preserve any Arabic indication that the situation has ended, continues, or is being viewed from a past reporting point. In a work-history message, this distinction decides whether the reader understands someone to be a current employee or a former one; it should survive even when the target sentence uses a tense different from the most visible source form.
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