This paper intends to underline the importance of ‘didactic translation' L1-L2 for learners of Italian in general and for future translators in particular, as it provides an occasion for a contrastive analysis aimed at reducing interferences. The analysis of cases of syntactic transfer in the translations into Italian by French speaking students allows measurement of their interlanguage competence, which increases with the awareness of structural differences between typologically close languages as French and Italian. This research focuses on three structures that are particularly subject to syntactic transfer between French and Italian: cleft sentences, the indefinite pronoun 'on' and the conjunction 'si' in its non-conditional uses.