Learning math-oriented French

Question

I'd like to read several papers which I find interesting, but they are all in French. I have no problem with taking a traditional French class or learning it via some other method. However, I realize that I will probably not be introduced to a lot of mathematically-oriented vocabulary. Does anyone know of a good reference for this material?

Answer 1

The mathematical vocabulary in French is not usually much of a problem: the words tend to be either slight spelling variations of the English words (vecteur, mesurable, isomorphe...) or translations of the corresponding non-mathematical terms (ensemble = set, suite = sequence, carré = square...). There are a few tricky things to watch out for, e.g. under the influence of Bourbaki, in France $0$ is considered to be positive.

Answer 2

My technique has always been to keep a window open with google translate to look up the nouns i didn't know. It's not fool proof (there are some french mathematical terms that simply don't have a good translation), but it got me through a dozen or so papers for my Master's research.