In the upper left are the 1947 manual for the Mle 1935 and training manual for the MAT 49SMG.

At middle top is the parts catalog for the Mle 1949-56 and 49-56 M.S.E. rifles.

At upper right is the small arms course booklet for the Mle 49-56 rifle.



On the bottom are the 3rd Edition parts catalog for the MAT 49 and the 1st Edition parts catalog for the Mle 1950 pistol.



I've been looking for a few of these for a long time now and it's as fun as Christmas morning when I was a kid.  Just imagine all the little gems of knowledge that are waiting inside!!

Very nice. I need a Mac50 pistol manual.

I translated the 1963 6th edition recently.  I really enjoy doing this stuff because it really makes your brain work.



I've also finished the 7th edition but haven't trimmed it to size yet so I don't have pictures of that one.

More goodies came today.  Here are a few of them:



Several MAS 36 manuals:



The one on the left is the 1954 Edition of the issue pocket manual.

On the right is a 176 page comprehensive one that goes into great detail about the rifle, it's tactical use, proper cleaning techniques, ballistics and numerous of other neat stuff.  It then finishes up with miniature color prints of the various training targets used.  There is going to be some real gems of knowledge in that one, I'm sure.

The one in the middle is a real treat.  It's the April of 1940 provisional manual for the MAS 1936 with the December of 1952 addition for the for the MAS 1936-51 grenade launcher equipped version of the rifle.  This is what would eventually become the 1st Edition of the manual shown on the left.  This is a fine example of a first source document and one I feel lucky to have found.



This next one is the July of 1969 edition of the parts catalog for the APX-L 806 rifle scope.



This covers both the older setup as used on the MAS 49-56 rifle and the 03 version of the scope as used on the FR F1 sniper rifle.  Parts catalogs are always very helpful to have on hand when you're doing research because they document every single part along with illustrations, exploded drawings and reference numbers.



Next are parts catalogs for the three versions of the MAS 1936 rifle.  At the bottom is the standard rifle.  In the middle is the CR 39 version and, at the top, is the LG48 version:





This last one is the best of the haul and one I never thought I'd find.  It's the November of 1951 1st Edition parts catalog for the MAS 49 rifle.





 When you examine these various parts catalogs, you always find little gems of knowledge that enhance your understanding of the equipment.  For example, you often discover that there is more than one version of a part because it was updated for one reason or another.  Often, these variations are generally (or even completely) unknown to collectors.  Another thing I can now definitively find out is exactly which parts are truly interchangeable among the various rifles.  It's easy to find conflicting information from various sources on this subject but comparing part numbers from the various period catalogs will go a long way towards answering that question for good.   Sometimes you find interesting hand-written notes and updates in these things too.  Good stuff!

These tech/parts manuals are awesome!!! I love my MAS 49/56 and my Mas 36. I as well collect tech/parts manuals but all mine are US military ones.  I would use the Google translate picture mode to read them. Used it on some Russian MREs and it worked great.

That will definitely not work well for French technical text.  You might get something that you can get an idea of what it says but you are not going to get anything quality.  As I do not speak or read French, I use a number of methods and sources to translate these and there are times that I need to mull over a sentence for a day or two to get a true and proper translation of it.  To do it properly, a lot of time and effort must be expended.  There is no easy way to get a satisfactory result.

For example, when translating the 1969 3rd Edition of the MAS 36 manual, on page 6 under "Main Parts",  you find the following text:

"Canon, boite de culasse et hausse, culasse mobile, mecanismes, monture et garnitures, baionnette."

Google translate will give you:

"Barrel, receiver and rear sight, movable breech, mechanisms, mount and fittings, bayonet."

"Moveable breech" is the bolt.

"Mount and fittings" does not properly translate no matter how you try to fit that square peg into a round hole.  "Mount" is referring to all of the wooden parts that make up the "stock" as we understand it in the United States including the butt stock, forend, and handguard.

But you can't simply translate that as "stock" because, on the same page under "Noteworthy parts", you find the various parts listed individually (i.e. stock, forend, and handguard).  Similarly, that section individually names some of the various fittings (i.e. rear band, front band and stacking rod, and bayonet support).

So, what to do?  In order to keep the "flavor" of the original manual, we want to apply semantic translation as much as possible but we have to temper that with communicative translation so that an English reader can follow along without becoming confused.  So, "mount and fittings" becomes "stock parts and fittings" or "stock set and fittings".  I opted for "stock parts" because "stock set" may cause confusion when considering other translations such as the parts catalog.  In some context, "set" may be interpreted as ALL parts that make up the entire stock, including the fittings.  

Another tricky one is "mechanisms".  That is referring to the entire magazine assembly (floorplate, magazine spring, "elevator", floorplate button, button spring, and button retaining pin) as well as the entire trigger assembly (trigger, sear, ejector, two springs, and two pins).  Below, under "Noteworth parts" they list these two "mechanisms" separately as the "trigger mechanism" and the "repeating mechanism".  So, we leave "mechanisms" alone because, while it may initially seem confusing, it is put into context just a bit farther down on the same page.


So again, we can see that properly translating these little French gems takes a fair amount of thought to include, among other logistical variables, careful consideration of multiple translatory factors, subjective as well as objective decisions and, above all, TIME.  You don't and can't simply throw these things together in an hour or two.  It takes a lot of work and google translate ain't gonna' do it for you!


Then, we have to consider transferring the images from the original manuals to the translated manuals...............................

I bought a couple manuals through Apex. The APX scope manual was especially helpful. Well done.

Thank you sir.  I'm happy that you're satisfied!

Pleasantly surprised at how nicely executed these manuals were executed. Good stuff

Thank you for the kind words sir!  I'm currently working on a training manual for the MAS 49-56 in the same format as the blue covered Model 1950 pistol jobber pictured below:

My translated work is on the left compared to the original on the right:


Original:


Translation:


These training manuals go into a lot more detail than the smaller ones that were issued with the equipment and they are very useful too.  Where the issue manual ecplains how to use the rifle or pistol, the training one goes into the nuts and bolt os how it actually functions.  If you put both together and throw in a parts catalog, you get a trifecta of information enabling you to get a thorough understanding of your firearm.  I just love this stuff!


Here's the parts catalog for the 1950 Pistol.

Original:



Translation:



Original:



Translation:



And finally, original:


Reproduction:

Got ya on the Google picture translation, as I didn't think about the minor differences that could come up that make a huge difference with tech stuff.  I can definitely see the problem with that.  I only used it for Russian MREs and I see now it prolly only gave it a "good enough" translation. Still super cool stuff and I think it would be extremely fun to translate them with a book as you do. Keep up the good work and good luck finding more of these!!

Thank you sir.  I sent you a PM.

Here are some others I've done:











This one was one of my favorites because the original is so rare.  I have a bunch of various ones to do and, as far as I know, almost none have ever been translated to English.  To my mind, they should be preserved because some of the information they contain is either almost unknown in the collecting community and some of what they say puts to rest much conjecture I've seen.

I just finished another on the MAS 1949-56 rifle today.  This one is 43 pages with 30 pictures/illustrations and 2 tables. Every time I do one of these, I learn something new:

An original is on the right with my reproduction on the left:



Pages 12-13




Pages 16-17:



Pages 22-23:

Today, I finished the English translation of the 29 page  French Army Technical Guide for the model F1 scope  and printed a test shot.  I still have a little proofreading to do over the weekend but it'll be ready for final printing by the middle of next week.  This test print just has a plain paper cover but the final version will have a proper cardstock one.  If you bought one of the recently imported J8's, it most likely came with a photocopy of this same manual.  However, Scrome simply removed the original cover and title page and replaced them with a cover bearing their logo and a picture of the scope:





BUT, they screwed up and removed an entire page from the manual and replaced it with a duplicate of a page from later on in the manual.  So, you end up with two of one page and zero of another!  I've rectified that in my manual.  



Also, there is an English language video online that attempts to explain how the range finding features of the reticle work but it's completely inaccurate.  To site just one example, the curved stadiametric lines are not there to "draw your eye to the center of the scope".  In reality, they are used for range finding.  In fact, there are 4 scales built into the reticle and the manual explains how each is used.



Here's the table of contents showing just what is covered in the manual:





Lastly, here's a picture of pages 12-13 showing you three of the 18 included illustrations:




I'll post some pictures of the finalized manual here next week.

God bless you OP.  Have you uncovered any factual mistakes in the original texts?

I find little things once and a while.  If it's immaterial, like a missed period or a page number off by one in the table of contents,  I generally include it.  If it would matter, like "mm" instead of "m", I correct it.  There aren't very many errors though.  They did a surprisingly good job for using all state owned contractors.

There are lots of little extraneous numbers strewn about though, the meaning of which I seldom know.  I religiously include those and do my best to match up the fonts exactly throughout each manual.  Sometimes, that means using two different fonts in one four digit year to get the "1", "6", or "9" to look right.  Sometimes it's impossible no matter how much I try but many times it's doable.

For example, IIRC, there are at least five different fonts one the cover shown below.  Then you have to figure in the varying spacing between letters in order to match the look and line spacing.  Typically, the cover takes the most time and a complicated one like this can easily suck up two plus hours to format correctly.  It's never perfect though because they were using set type and I'm working digitally.  At some point, you just have to tell yourself it's good enough and move on because many of the fonts are not absolutely identical to what they were 60 + years ago..  Still, almost every time I print another batch, I find something I want to tweak a little bit.  It's a fluid process!




That's probably more information than you were looking for.  Sorry about that......I get carried away sometimes when I get to talking about this stuff.