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How do I say should in French?should meaning ought toWhere you could replace should with ought to and it would have more or less the same meaning, then a common translation in French is to use the conditional tense of the verb devoir. As in English, it is followed by the infinitive. For example:
je/tu devrais venir
I/you should come il devrait faire ses devoirs he should do his homework on devrait pouvoir venir we should be able to come vous devriez l'aider you should help him  Suggest a change / proposez une modificationHow to translate should have ... into FrenchThe formula should have ... is translated into French using the conditional perfect of devoir. This means that you use:
conditional of avoir + dû + infinitive
For example:
j'aurais dû venir
I should have come tu aurais dû lui dire que tu étais malade you should have told him that you were ill il n'aurait pas dû manger tant de chocolat he shouldn't have eaten so much chocolate Suggest a change / proposez une modificationNote from the last example that you can say shouldn't have by negating the verb in the usual way. should meaning wouldIn formal, old-fashioned usage, should is sometimes used to mean would.
Where you could change should to would with
essentially no change of meaning, then use the conditional
tense as usual in French.
Since using should in this way is essentially formal (and for many speakers old-fashioned), you could try to find a formal verb in French. For example, for I should like ... a possibility is to say j'aimerais ... or je souhaiterais ... rather than je voudrais .... It's often not possible to make such a distinction in French, however. should introducing a conditionIn English, the construction if I/you should ... is sometimes used to mean something similar to if ever I/you .... In French, a possible translation is therefore to use si jamais ... ("if ever ..."):
si jamais vous visitez la France, allez voir la Tour Eiffel
if you should (ever) visit France, go and see the Eiffel Tower Suggest a change / proposez une modification"it is surprising that he should ..." etcIn formal or careful usage, English sometimes uses should to emphasise the speaker's reaction to something rather than stating that something has taken place. (In a formal analysis, this is sometimes called a non-assertion.) For example: In this sentence, the speaker chooses to say should decide rather than decided to emphasise their reaction to the decision rather than simply stating that the decision was made. In French, this use of should generally corresponds to the subjunctive. The subjunctive is a special verb form used to make a non-assertion. (English no longer has subjunctive forms of the verb; the nearest equivalent to the subjunctive in English is using other constructions such as should ..., might ... as in the above example.) So to translate the above example into French using the subjunctive, we might say: The construction ait décidé means roughly the same as a décidé = (has) decided, but ait is the subjunctive form of avoir rather than the usual present tense form that you'd use to form the perfect tense. See also
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