French Translation

(1) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (2) Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (3) And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (4) God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. (5) God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day.

Au Commencement, Dieu a creé le ciel et la terre. Le terre était sans forme et vide. Les ténèbres couvraient la mer et l’esprit de dieu planait sur les eaux. Et Dieu a dit “ Soit lumière” et il y a eu la lumière. Dieu a vu que la lumière était bonne et il a sépareé la lumière des ténebres. Dieu a appelé la lumère le jour et les ténèbres il a appelé le nuit. Et il y a eu le soir et il ya a eu le matin – le premier jour.

Translation Notes: There were many stylistic choices that I had to make in order to preserve the meaning. I am not very familiar with passé simple so I used passé compose instead – although passé simple would actually be used in written texts. I did not include an article with Dieu because it is not the God it is merely just God – even though normally almost every noun has an article. Also I had to differentiate between imparfait and passé compose a couple of times. I used passé compose when the action was finished and compete – definite and the imparfait when the state/action lasted for a while. In addition, it was difficult figuring out which vocabulary to use. I don’t really know how to express the difference between the deep and the waters so I used “mer” and “eau” even though I know that that is not a perfect translation. I also wasn’t very sure about what construction to use for “let there be light.” I did the best that I could – trying to preserve the meaning over all else.

When comparing my translation with the actual French Bible, I noticed some differences in style. My translation is very literal where as the actual one uses more lyrical phrases that I am not familiar with. There are certain ways of phrasing the lines that I just don't know because I am not a native speaker.