Now I think about it, maybe I should have added that some protest songs in French were never felt as protest songs because they'd been adapted to be only pop songs. "If I Had A Hammer" for example was felt just a pop song in French because it was out of context –I remember I was in 6th grade and only teenagers were interested in those at that time, older people would be interested in "la chanson française" (Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Gilbert Bécaud, Charles Aznavour, Léo Ferré… and even older stuff, at that time things went more slowly, you didn't get a wagon load of new singers every week) and the "in between" more in jazz and whatever music came in with the GI's near the end of WW II and what we could hear on the radio in the late 50's –I can't tell, we had no radio then.
Hugues Aufray's translations kept the original, unusual for French ears and minds, atmosphere of Dylan's songs, Graeme Allwright did a very good job with the ones he translated from Pete Seeger.