Translation of ‘so’

Question

Having just read a post on StackExchange English about ‘so’, how would you translate it into French, as in ‘I think so’ or ‘So, anyway’. Would you use ‘ça’ ?

Answer 1

For what my English grammar knowledge is worth¹, that's some kind of reflexive pronoun, about a non-human object. I'd translate that as “le”, as in :

Je le² pense (bien).

You could also translate it with “ça”, hence :

C'est ce que je pense.

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“So” in “so, anyway”, as far as I know, doesn't have anything to do, and is merely some oral punctuation (is that what you're tagging “oral” for ?). This could translate³ to “donc”, or “alors”, not bearing much meaning :

Bon, alors… ⁵
Donc, euh…

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¹ Not much.
² Actually, if I were to say that, I'd omit the le and say “Je pense bien”, but it'd still be implicit.
³ I have a hard time translating it as I use “anyway”⁴ more and more myself (in “french”).
⁴ En anglais dans le texte.
⁵ Thanks to Evpok.

Answer 2

Personnally I link the English 'so' with the French 'ainsi', meaning 'this way'. I think so is the same as I think this way, in French one could say:

• Je pense ainsi.
• C'est ce que je pense.
• Je le pense.

In 'So, anyway' the 'so' has a totally different meaning... it's almost just an interjection... That would be translated to 'Soit', 'Bon, quoi qu'il en soit'...

Edit: Be careful 'quoi qu'il en soit' only stands for 'anyway', and as @LeVieuxGildas has remarked, the 'soit' in 'quoi qu'il en soit' doesn't correspond to 'so', but is really the verb 'être' conjugated in this case.

Answer 3

When a grammar (and not even a dictionnary) has three pages on the use of a word, you may be sure that it hasn't a simple traduction. To be idiomatic, you'll need to take the context into account.

For the given examples:

I think so.

Je le pense (aussi), c'est ce que je pense aussi, c'est bien ce que je pense.

So, anyway...

Bon, de toute façon...

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Un mot dont l'usage prend trois pages d'explication dans une grammaire, c'est le genre de mot qui n'a pas de traduction hors contexte. Pour les deux exemples donnés :

I think so.

Je le pense (aussi), c'est ce que je pense aussi, c'est bien ce que je pense.

So, anyway...

Bon, de toute façon...

Answer 4

1) I think that the most common equivalent of "I think so" is:

Oui, je pense.

Of course there are many other ways to say that, such as:

En effet. Effectivement. Probablement.

or just: "oui".

2) For the second sentence, which has a very different meaning. People often says stuff like:

Enfin, bref.

(i.e. okay, I/we have said everything on that topic, let's conclude or change the topic of conversation)

Voilà.

(i.e. That was what I/we had to say. Let's speak about something else.)

any many others....