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# pouvait — French to English

How French *pouvait* is translated into English in open, checked parallel texts: 1 translation with example sentences.

The Elamur Dictionary has no French section yet; the English translations below link to their meanings where it has them.

Sentence pairs counted, by form: pouvait (55 506). By style: everyday 552 · literary 109 · biblical 39 · parliamentary 2 774 · legal and administrative 4 949 · UN documents 47 083.

## could

Used about 37 234 times in the texts (everyday ≈ 334 · literary ≈ 70 · biblical ≈ 13 · parliamentary ≈ 1 560 · legal and administrative ≈ 2 887 · UN documents ≈ 32 370).

- Tom **pouvait** à peine marcher.
  Tom **could** barely walk.
  ([Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) · Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR · sentences by Asorel and CK · checked, community translation · [\#1095216](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/1095216) [\#4904040](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/4904040))

- Il ne **pouvait** aller plus loin.
  He **could** get no further.
  ([Project Gutenberg books (Verne, Hugo, Maupassant and their translators)](https://www.gutenberg.org/) · Project Gutenberg, public domain · checked, professional translation · verne journey centre earth, row 3412)

- Or Éli était âgé de quatre-vingt-dix-huit ans, il avait les yeux fixes et ne **pouvait** plus voir.
  Now Eli was ninety-eight years old. His eyes were set, so that he **could** not see.
  ([World English Bible and Louis Segond 1910](https://ebible.org/) · World English Bible; Louis Segond 1910; public domain, eBible.org · checked, professional translation · 1SA 4:15)

- On ne **pouvait** pire.
  They **could** not be making a worse decision.
  ([Europarl v8](https://www.statmt.org/europarl/) · Source: European Parliament proceedings, Europarl v8 (Koehn 2005) via OPUS (Tiedemann 2012) · checked, professional translation · segment 303616)

- La valeur d'entreprise **pouvait** être calculée comme suit:
  The enterprise value **could** be computed as the following:
  ([DGT-TM v2021](https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/language-technology-resources/dgt-translation-memory_en) · Source: European Commission, DGT-TM (Steinberger et al. 2012), re-used under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU; the Commission keeps ownership of the data · checked, professional translation · segment 4827026)

## More sentences

Sentence pairs with the word where no single translation was found: it may be translated by a phrase, or left out.

- Tom savait que Mary ne **pouvait** pas nager, mais il lui a quand même demandé d'aller nager avec lui.
  Tom knew that Mary couldn't swim, but he asked her to go swimming with him anyway.
  ([Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) · Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR · sentences by aperitero and CK · checked, community translation · [\#7731311](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/7731311) [\#7789759](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/7789759))

- Tom a dit qu'il ne **pouvait** pas se porter garant de Marie.
  Tom said that he couldn't vouch for Mary.
  ([Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) · Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR · sentences by tieguy and CK · checked, community translation · [\#1093049](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/1093049) [\#13868567](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/13868567))

- Sami ne **pouvait** pas supporter la sœur de Layla.
  Sami couldn't stand Layla's sister.
  ([Tatoeba](https://tatoeba.org/) · Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR · sentences by tras and OsoHombre · checked, community translation · [\#7271883](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/7271883) [\#7272147](https://tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/7272147))

## Grammar

Notes on grammar and translation on Mova: [French grammar](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/) · [English grammar](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/) · [translating between English and French](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/translation/pairs/en-fr/) · [translating from French](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/translation/from-fr/) · [translating into English](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/translation/into-en/).

## About these examples

Translations are found by how often the two words stand in the same sentence pairs, and the highlighted words are matched automatically: both are approximate. Counts are estimated from a sample of each source. Every example names its source and licence. [Submit a better translation or example](https://md.translate.elamur.ai/free/en/submit/?pair=fr-en&word=pouvait).


Every example is quoted under its source's licence and credited with it; the rest of the site is open under the Elamur Cosmic License.