Czech to Canadian French: preserve group reference when choosing on, nous and address terms
A Czech first-person plural can become conversational on
A Czech message referring to the writer’s group can be rendered in Canadian French with nous or, in a familiar spoken register, on. The choice affects grammatical agreement and tone. It should preserve the group’s identity rather than automatically turn we into an unidentified somebody.
The OQLF explains that on can refer to known people, including a group equivalent to nous, and that this use is especially frequent orally in familiar language. For more formal writing it recommends the corresponding personal pronoun. A Czech workplace report and a casual message to friends need not use the same target register.
This distinction is useful because Czech verbal agreement can identify first-person plural reference without an overt my. The translator must recover that participant set before selecting on. A missing printed Czech subject pronoun does not mean that the people involved are unknown.
Singular verbal form does not necessarily mean one real person
The OQLF examples On a été consultés and On a été rassemblées describe identified plural groups. Their participial agreement follows the represented people even though the verb construction uses on. The visible form of the pronoun cannot be used as a headcount.
CzechEncy’s agreement account separates finite person-number endings from participial gender-number agreement. This provides a useful source reading strategy: establish which forms identify the group and what descriptive agreement says about it. The Canadian French construction can reorganise those features without changing the actual participants.
When a Czech group report names women and then uses a first-person plural continuation, a familiar French on construction should retain that known group rather than default to an indefinite male individual. Conversely, where the Czech refers to people generally, selecting a specific we group could make the writer claim participation which the source never asserted.
Local familiarity does not authorise a different relationship automatically
Canadian French audience choice also affects direct address. The OQLF notes that spontaneous tu at a first meeting is more frequent in Quebec than in some other French-speaking areas. It does not describe this as a universal instruction to use tu with everyone.
Czech vykání can use plural grammar for one courteous recipient, as Rosen explains. A translation should interpret that source relationship before choosing tu or vous. Selecting Canada as the target variety does not by itself erase the formality or distance which the Czech writer deliberately expressed.
The OQLF’s Voulez-vous qu’on se tutoie? is an explicit proposal to change address terms. Such a proposal differs from silently changing them during translation. For a Czech exchange, keep the writer’s group reference separate from the relationship to the addressee: conversational on can identify the speaker’s group, while tu or vous identifies how the recipient is addressed. Both choices should fit the source purpose and the target register.
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