traduisent

Traduisent is the third-person plural present tense form of the French verb traduire, meaning “they translate.” It is used when the subject is plural and the action takes place in the present. The spelling also appears in the present subjunctive, as in qu’ils traduisent, depending on the syntactic context.

Etymology and semantics: Traduire comes from Old French traduire, from Latin traducere, “to lead across.” In French, traduire is a transitive verb meaning to render meaning from one language to another, or to express something in another form. Beyond linguistic translation, it can also be used metaphorically to indicate that a phenomenon or data expresses or conveys a reality.

Conjugation notes: The present indicative forms are je traduis, tu traduis, il/elle traduit, nous traduisons, vous traduisez, ils/elles traduisent. The past participle is traduit, and the passé composé typically uses avoir traduit (par exemple, ils ont traduit le texte). The form traduisent thus marks the third-person plural in present contexts, and can appear identically in the present subjunctive.

Usage and examples: In everyday language, “Ils traduisent le texte en anglais” means “They translate the text into English.” The phrase “ces chiffres traduisent une tendance croissante” uses traduisent in a figurative sense, meaning the figures reflect or express a growing trend. The expression “traduire en …” is common for specifying the target language, as in “traduire en français.”

See also: Traduction, traducteur, traduire.