I was about to answer AlanF's comment on his biography thread but I thought better make it a distinct topic.
From 1981 to 1985 I worked in the translation department of the French Bethel. My ordinary assignment was Aid to Bible Understanding (only a reduced version of it was actually translated in several volumes) and The Watchtower.
I had only limited personal contact with Emile Muller, the one and only translator of the Traduction du monde nouveau (New World Translation in French). He worked in Boulogne, in the close suburbs of Paris, I worked in the new Louviers facilities over 60 miles away. I met him a number of times, but the most I learnt about him and his work was through Michel Blaser. Michel at that time was the dept. overseer and worked in Louviers, but he had been in close contact with Emile before and still met him every week or so. And Michel was (and certainly still is) a nice person, quite friendly and open to me.
From those sources I remember the following: in the 60's Emile Muller had been sent to Brooklyn with a team of translators from different countries to prepare the translation of the NWT into a first set of languages. From the work he made there under the direct supervision of the "NWT Committee" a first translation of the NT (The Christian Greek Scriptures -- New World Translation) was published. But Emile was not satisfied with it. When he came back to France he resolved to study Biblical Greek and Hebrew seriously to make the best possible translation, instead of blindly translating the English. As a result the complete NWT was only published in 1974, years later than its Italian, Spanish, Portuguese siblings. The NT translation was entirely different from the first separate publication. And the 1974 French NWT had many particular features -- (which were unfortunately erased in the later 1995 revision, I guess by somebody else).
One of the most famous was John 1:1 which read: La Parole était dieu. Lower case to "god", but no indefinite article (a strict translation of the English NWT would have been la Parole était un dieu; so the 1995 revision). Emile argued from an observation in comparative stylistics of English and French (e.g. Vinay & Darbelnet) that in an attributive expression French usage omits the indefinite article which the English uses (e.g. "I am a doctor" -> "Je suis médecin"). And apparently his correspondents in Brooklyn accepted such explanations. They trusted him and respected his work, and accordingly allowed him the necessary time to finish it his way.
As to John 17:3 which Alan mentioned, qu'ils apprennent à te connaître (even in the 1995 revision) is indeed better than the English "taking in knowledge of you", in that it avoids a substantive, while maintaining the progressive aspect which the NWT (over-)translates from the Greek present (ginôskosi[n], verb).
However Emile often complained that his "hands were bound by the English NWT options". And I suspect he wasn't very happy with the slavish 1995 revision if he lived to see it.