ABSTRACT
The preliminary exercise points the way to four types of structure that are highly characteristic of French, and which often give rise to translation problems. In what follows, each of these types of structure will be dealt with in a separate section. What they all have in common is that each type can be interpreted as involving a particular kind of ellipsis, and each can be conveniently described as an 'absolute' construction. As in the case of nominalization, 'absolute' constructions in French also have their structural counterparts in English, but are distinctly less commonly used. Consequently, in translating a French 'absolute' construction into an idiomatic English TT, the translator usually needs to resort to grammatical transposition. As with nominalization, the contrast between French 'absolute' constructions and their English counterparts usually reveals a preference in English for the particular or concrete as opposed to a preference in French for the generic or abstract.
