Business French Lesson Cost Cutting chapter 31 is taken from the book Hands Free Business French.
Below is a very real sample chapter in which Eric and I design phrases that carefully select French grammar, verbs and subjects that are relevant to learning Business French for use in a professional environment.
Related post: Sales situations
- “cost-cutting”: « réduction des coûts »
Example sentence Business French Lesson Cost Cutting
“The CEO just announced his four-year cost-cutting program.”
« Le PDG vient d’annoncer son plan de réduction des coûts sur quatre ans. »
Breakdown
- “a program”: « un plan »
False Friend alert!
“program” is not « un programme ». « Un programme » is usually used with « programme télé », “a TV program” or a “festival program”. « Un plan » is usually what you use for “a program”, what you plan to do.
- “just” as in “just announced”: « VENIR DE »
We will see this in the grammar point.
- “cost-cutting”: « réduction des coûts »
This is an excellent example of a translation that is not literal, because the English uses two nouns with a hyphen in the middle to turn the first one into an adjective, cost and cut: cost-cutting, cutting the cost. The French can’t do that. So it has to use two nouns, with « de » or « des » in the middle.
- “The CEO”, the Chief Executive Officer is « le Président-Directeur Général », le PDG
- “to announce”: « ANNONCER »
- “four-year”: « de quatre ans »
The same thing happens as before, the hyphen makes it an adjective, so we have to use « de », the genitive way: « de quatre ans ».
French Grammar point: « venir de »
Why did I translate “just” with « venir de »? « Venir de » is a set phrase. Here’s how it works. You’ve got two verbs and the first one will be conjugated, but the second one will stay in the infinitive.
For example, « venir d’annoncer »:
VENIR D’ANNONCER – TO HAVE JUST ANNOUNCED (present)
| Je vien-s d’annoncer | I (have) just announced |
| Tu vien-s d’annoncer | You (have) just announced |
| Il/Elle vien-t d’annoncer | He/She (has) just announced |
| Nous ven-ons d’annoncer | We (have) just announced |
| Vous ven-ez d’annoncer | You (have) just announced |
| Ils/Elles vienn-ent d’annoncer | They (have) just announced |
So we only conjugate « VENIR »; the second verb « ANNONCER » stays in the infinitive. It’s a very useful go-to expression in French.
Pay attention to the clue which is « de », it gives away the fact that it’s used as a modal verb and not as a common verb. « VENIR » alone is “TO COME”. It behaves exactly the same, it’s the same verb and you conjugate it the same.
It’s like “going to” in English: “going” is a stand-alone verb, which can also be used as a modal verb, thus introducing another verb, e.g. “I’m going to eat”.
So you can use « venir de » with any verb: « je viens de manger » (“I just ate”), « je viens de marcher » (“I just walked”, « je viens de parler » (“I just talked”), with all 6 persons.
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