False friends of translator

The term ‘translator’s false friends’ (les faux amis) was introduced by the French theorists of translation M. Koessler and J. Derocquigny in 1928.160 This term means a word that has the same or similar form in the source and target languages but another meaning in the target language. Translators’ false friends result from transferring the sounds of a source language word literally into the target language. P. Newmark calls them deceptive cognates,161 as their meanings are different and they can easily confuse the target text receptor.