To traduce someone is to say false and damaging things about them in public — to attack their good name with lies. This is a rare, formal, rather grand word. You will meet it in court reports, in political speeches, in older novels, and almost never in conversation. If a friend spread lies about you, you would say "he lied about me" or "he trashed my name". A lawyer or a nineteenth-century character says traduce. Two details matter. First, it needs an object: you traduce a person, a name, a memory, a group. You cannot just "traduce" with nothing after it. Second, the untruth is important. Saying something harsh but true is not traducing — it may be cruel, but the word carries the sense that the speaker is misrepresenting. Politicians love it for this reason: "I have been traduced by my opponents" claims both that you were attacked and that the attack was false, in one word, without having to prove anything. It sits close to slander and defame. Defame is the neutral legal term. Slander is spoken lies. Traduce is the literary one, and it carries a note of wounded dignity — the person using it feels their honour has been dirtied.

誹謗、詆毀、中傷。書面語和法庭用語，日常台灣人講「講人壞話」用不到這個字，看小說或政治新聞才會遇到。