This page started life containing only my ramblings about French turning and a couple of translations but has since grown into a complete vocabulary page. Many of the translations come from Word Reference but a good many (especially the more descriptive names of tools or ideas) come from searching the web for common usage.

One of my dreams is to move to France and turn for a living - I have serious doubts whether I will ever manage to fulfill this dream but I am going to make sure that I at least give myself the best chance possible. It was with this in mind that I thought it was about time to find out about woodturning in France. The first thing to do is find out what woodturning is called in French because although I am learning the language I've noticed that the course is somewhat light in words related to woodturning. My first guess was to look up the word for wood and the word for turning but I doubted that would be the word used. After all woodturning is very commonly used in English but is not actually in the dictionary (at least not in mine).

A quick search online turned up the French association of wood turners AFTAB which gave me the word "tournage" for turning. A further search on tournage indicates that this means just turning in general much like we would use turning in English. Metal turning is "tournage mécanique" where as woodturning is just "tournage" or "tournage du bois" or similar (bois being wood). The French woodturning scene appears to be at least as well developed as the UK scene which is good to see. The AFTAB site is well put together and approachable, with an English translation, and has plenty of galleries and information about woodturning. This exercise got me thinking that there are actually quite a few words that would be useful to know if I am to turn in France so I have started compilng a list below.

The table is alphabetized on the English word so is most useful for going from English to French (as that is what I mainly need). If you want to translate from French to English the browsers page searching function can be used to locate the French word (Ctrl-F normally). If there are any translations that you think would be useful please let me (doozer) know .