It’s similar in meaning, but I think too far for being a direct translation...

???

swear vs. promise

If you promise you don‘t raise your hand to your chest like when swearing e.g.

‚I swear‘ like ‚I swear to God‘ has much more weight to it than just ‚I promise‘ IMHO

So I was wondering whether this difference also exists in French?

En français, jurer et promettre sont très proches de sens et s’emploient l’un pour l’autre dans la plupart des cas...

D’ailleurs j’ai fait les 2 traductions françaises...

Jurer a un sens historiquement plus solennel, donc juridique et religieux. Mais avec la déchristianisation, cette frontière de sens avec promettre s’est peu à peu effacée.

But ‚swear’ is much more formal like ‚taking an oath‘ or sometimes even a substitute for ‚curse‘.

• I swear to speak the truth, the whole truth... etc

All use cases I can think of in English do emphasize this difference and not a single one would allow for ‚promise‘ as a substitute.

Would a judge in French be satisfied if you answered with ‚I promise‘ instead of ‚I swear‘ ?

Here, the English original bears no context. The judge is nowhere to be seen. Hence it might be translated by both in French, like in « I swear I won’t do it again “...

I can see your point when translating TO French if you think it makes no difference there, but if I read ‚J’ai promis.‘ I would never translate it to ‚Ich habe es geschworen.‘ or ‚I swore‘ because German does appreciate and acknowledge this difference and I guess so does English.

And as well as there is no judge to be seen, neither is any context of a former action you regret.

So why not play it safe and leave apples to apples and oranges to oranges ;-?

And if it’s just for the sake of not confusing speakers that do not speak our western languages at all and hence could wrongly assume that swear and promise is equivalent...

It‘s similar to not acknowledging a difference between
• I hurried/rushed/ran/walked fast etc. to the train station.

‚promising‘ is not ‚swearing‘

Kes ke tü påns? ;-)

You’re just so wrong...

https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/4678636