French term
à toucher ...
Phrases like this occur many times in this document. They appear to be instructions about how to manoeuvre a ship relative to certain landmarks or other geographical features marked on charts.
For the record the location is somewhere on the French Atlantic coast.
"-Le chateau d'eau de X à toucher à gauche des grèves de Y"
"-La chute du Cap d'X à toucher la partie gauche de l'amas du Cap"
"-Le clocher de X à toucher à gauche de Y"
"Limite EST: le Grand chateau d'eau à toucher à droite du phare du X"
"-Le grand chateau d'eau de X à toucher à gauche du Y"
| 3 | just touching... |
Tony M
|
| 4 +1 | brushing |
SafeTex
|
| 4 | skirting |
Rajinder Arora
|
Non-PRO (2): mchd, GILLES MEUNIER
When entering new questions, KudoZ askers are given an opportunity* to classify the difficulty of their questions as 'easy' or 'pro'. If you feel a question marked 'easy' should actually be marked 'pro', and if you have earned more than 20 KudoZ points, you can click the "Vote PRO" button to recommend that change.
How to tell the difference between "easy" and "pro" questions:
An easy question is one that any bilingual person would be able to answer correctly. (Or in the case of monolingual questions, an easy question is one that any native speaker of the language would be able to answer correctly.)
A pro question is anything else... in other words, any question that requires knowledge or skills that are specialized (even slightly).
Another way to think of the difficulty levels is this: an easy question is one that deals with everyday conversation. A pro question is anything else.
When deciding between easy and pro, err on the side of pro. Most questions will be pro.
* Note: non-member askers are not given the option of entering 'pro' questions; the only way for their questions to be classified as 'pro' is for a ProZ.com member or members to re-classify it.
Proposed translations
just touching...
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2 hrs (2018-11-17 12:30:15 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------
I believe so, yes; possibly not 'shoreline', since that really means everything you are looking at from the boat! Without knowing the exact geography of this location, I suspect 'grève' here is probably something more distinctly identifiable from the sea, like 'beach'
And not, not really 'port / starboard' — those only refer to positions relative to the vessel: "Keep the Channel Buoy to port" is correct, but when referring to land marks, you would indeed use left and right.
| Thanks very much ... so "X water tower just touching the left-hand side of Y shoreline"... ? Something like that? NB I also wonder whether it should be "port" rather than "left", but OTOH bâbord and tribord also crop up in this text... |
| neutral |
SafeTex
: I think Tony's other idea (in line with) is actually much better as a starting point. I'm not sure that even sailors would say that "a water tower touches a lighthouse for instance".
2 hrs
|
|
Yes, but when something has non-zero width, whether something is to the right or left or dead in the middle makes a vital difference; 'lined up with' is close, but not close enough. 'In line with' would translate a different term, but not this one.
|
India
Edu. - Admn & Law; Work Exp.-Tech+Engg.
Native in: English 
, Hindi
Works in: French to English, English to French, English to Hindi, and 4 more.
skirting
| neutral |
Tony M
: 'skirting' would tend to suggest 'passing close beside', which is patently not the case here.
44 mins
|
brushing
| neutral |
Tony M
: Again, risks implying that there is relative movement between the 2 objects; in any case, it is not the term we'd use in maritime navigation.
21 mins
|
| agree |
GILLES MEUNIER
: Obviously....
16 hrs
|
Discussion
You could also cross-check with the MacMillan Reeds Nautical Almanach for the same place. You can often find extracts online, or EN versions of pilots, particularly for the French Atlantic coast.
P.S. Nothing unusual in using "left/right" as the landmarks are described with reference to each other and are (obviously) in a fixed position. Describing them in relation to a boat as port/starboard would only have meaning with reference to the boat's position, "leave to port/starboard", etc. in circumstances such as Tony points out. ;-)