French Lesson Business Reports

French Lesson Business Reports

French Lesson Business Reports is Chapter 53 in this free French Lessons course. This chapter is helpful because it explains how to communicate important phrases you might use in your work place, keep going! Check out the full audiobook version here to really help you understand the pronunication and fast track your progress.

French Lesson Business Reports Chapter 53

“Sales are up this quarter but earnings are stable because production costs have risen.”

“the earnings”: « les revenus » 

« Les ventes ont augmenté ce trimestre mais les revenues sont stables, car les coûts de production ont grimpé. »

“the earnings”: « les revenus »

In English, “earnings” comes from “to earn”. 

“revenue”: « le revenu » comes from « revenir »: “to comeback”.

So, your revenue, your earnings are the portion of your investment that comes back, it’s your return on investment. By the way, ROI is also used in French for « retour sur investissement »; the acronym is the same. 

“sales”: « les ventes »

“to be up”, as in “to increase”: « augmenter »

This is yet another example of the English being more straightforward, action-driven: “to be up”;

and the French is more conceptual. 

“this quarter”: « ce trimestre » 

“stable”: « stable »

Again, don’t forget to match the gender and number of the noun. 

« les revenus sont stables », masculine plural so « stables » needs to have an -s. 

“the production costs”: « les coûts de production ». 

Again, two nouns “production costs” and in French « coûts de productions »: “cost of production”.

French Verb “to rise”: « grimper ». 

In this case both are practical images. « grimper » means “to climb” as in to climb a ladder, a mountain. « GRIMPER » is the infinitive, and we used the past participle.

For a first-group verb like « grimper », it’s very easy. You remove the ending in -ER, so you’ve got the root « grimp- », and you add an -e with an upwards accent (un accent aigu): « grimpé ».

« Les coûts de production ont grimpé »:  “The production cost have risen.”

Here is the full sentence again:

“Sales are up this quarter but earnings are stable because production costs have risen.”

« Les ventes ont augmenté ce trimestre mais les revenus sont stables, car les coûts de production ont grimpé. »

So there we have another lessons all wrapped up. Be sure to have a listen to the French Audiobook Hands Free Business French at this link HERE – and then check out some more of the posts we have prepared for you here