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French to English translations [PRO] Bus/Financial - Business/Commerce (general)
French term or phrase:métiers
The context is a case study about a wine and spirits company (founded in France, but an international presence) that is using a new business analytics software. The term "métiers" keeps coming up and i'm not sure to what exactly it refers. My first thought was the different departments within the company, but "services" is used in that context and I think there is a distinction.
"Pour ne pas risquer de recréer ce qui se faisait avec (former software), l’équipe projet a commencé par réaliser une démonstration des capacités de (new software) aux métiers, ce qui a permis d’ouvrir la discussion sur les indicateurs et les axes d’analyse les plus pertinents."
Explanation: You could look at this company, a big Burgundy-based wine business with wines from various other regions too: https://www.boisset.fr/fr/?valid_legal=1
Is it structured by "Terroirs" or "Domaines & maisons", or both?
Teams is perhaps more modern than other options.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 hrs (2023-05-12 13:46:59 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Ruth, re
"applications métiers" and "utilisateurs métiers" (of the software)
"team" gets a ton of search search matches and some high-quality matches too:
"Personal vs. ***Team Applications*** in Microsoft Teams
SharePoint Maven https://sharepointmaven.com › personal-vs-team-appli... Aug 31, 2021 — *Did you know that in Microsoft Teams, ***Team Applications*** could be personal and/or belong to a Team? This article explains it all*."
Plenty of other search matches too, for what it's worth.
And the same applies to "team users", here's one example (and there are plenty of hits that don't refer to MS Teams):
"Manage Teams with Microsoft Teams PowerShell
Microsoft https://learn.microsoft.com › Learn › Microsoft Teams Oct 5, 2022 — ... get-team , set-team ), managing ***team users*** ( add-teamuser , remove-teamuser ), as well as cmdlets for managing the channels of the team"
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 hrs (2023-05-12 13:55:01 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Internet search "business analytics" + "team users" and you get things like
"development team users" "Senior Leadership Team Users" "field team users" "IT team users"
Thank you very much! It was hard to decide which answer to go with as there were so many helpful suggestions, but I decided on "teams" in the end! 4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer
It is a metonymy but it's hard to render it as is in English . In French it's far more easily understood that the "métier" are the people plying that trade (whether employees or not). It's especially clear in a concern where they work side by side with other "métiers" (sometimes more precisely "corps de métier").
Phil's suggestion "departments", alternatively "staff/personnel" (although "staff" has sometimes a somewhat specific sense for some authors) hence Conor's "teams". That's what it means in this context, that is the different people and units contributing to the operation of this company (ranging from security, to quality control, to all the other wine-specific or anyway sector-specific jobs, such as https://www.studyrama.com/formations/fiches-metiers/metiers-...
What I'm thinking is that this sense of "métiers" was a slight or major (depending on your judgement) mistranslation of "business" dating back to the early days of enterprise software, which has gone uncorrected all this time, and that's why "métiers" is tricky to translate back into English.
"When did enterprise software start? Started by a team of former IBM engineers in Germany, Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP for short) was founded in 1972 to provide business software for enterprise-level manufacturers. They released their first ERP system, R/2, in 1992."
There you go then! This is exactly the sort of text in which I've encountered this term being used. I think that re-inforces the notion that you can't use anything too concrete here. Good luck!
Albeit "metonym" was not in my vocabulary until today. I can certainly visualise circumstances both where "disciplines" (functions, names to describe things that are done) and "teams" (the people doing them) might be a suitable translation. In Ruth's short extract, "teams" seems to fit the bill perfectly. As we cannot see the rest of the text, we can only speculate when, if ever, it will be a propos to use different terms.
I do think that's rather ponderous next to the French.
You lose more than you gain by trying to stay so close to the literal sense. And is it really true that something more concrete - but also more idiomatic - would "create a false meaning"? That's pure madness to me.
Metonymy, indeed — except that it is for something more abstract. In that instance, I would probably keep it in full as 'business disciplines', where it has all its sense — this is one case where anything more concrete (teams, services, etc.) would create a false meaning "To give the (various) business disciplines greater autonomy" doesn't shock me.
@Tony Literally it means "things that are done" in a business, but in practice it's a metonym for the people or divisions that do them. I think you have to have that in mind when translating it. Would you really "give more autonomy to the *disciplines*"? It's not very idiomatic.
Although I certinaly agree with your opening remarks, I couldn't entirely endorse what you go on to say. I think the trouble to me seems to be that 'métier' is used to refer to a fairly intangible, conceptual idea of 'things that are done within a business', and particularly, things that are normally aligned along a certain specialization. Hence I think ideas like 'area', 'unit', 'service', 'team' etc. are too concrete and organizational. I agree that per se you don't need the same translation throughout a document, although if you don't, you do have to be terribly careful not to confuse the reader!
Métier is a bit of a cliché/buzzword and probably isn't being used to designate any one type of organisational unit - Ruth says they use "service" for that. Which means you don't necessarily need the same translation all the way through the document. I'd perhaps pick "areas of the business" for the sample sentence, but elsewhere, you might opt for e.g. "teams" (as Conor suggested).
I see nothing at all wrong with the "phone-a-friend" option, getting the permission of or going through any translation agency that might be involved, but if you want to do it on your own, try to figure out how the company is structured, and search the whole document for the term.
You'll probably find that you'll need something not too specific so as not to be wrong (like "professions") and not too broad so as not be wrong (like "divisions", wrong register anyway): again I'm making a case for my "teams"!
I think what (edit) Tony is getting at with "type of activity" is similar types of profession, people who work together, hence "teams".
Also I think "métiers" might be a little jargony, and fairly recent (last few years) jargon at that – I don't remember seeing it a lot, say, 15 years ago (or maybe I didn't pick up on it or don't remember).
'units' / 'departments' might work in certain specific situations, but don't in general, as the 'métier' is something much more abstract: 'the notion of a certain type of activity'. The problem is that we can find sentences like "the accountancy (métier) is handled by the Finance Department, whereas the logistics (métier) is handled by the Despatch Department." In some cases in EN (possibly even my own example), we simply don't need a separate word, and could just use 'accounting' and 'logistics'. Sadly, in other cases, this isn't possibly. E.g. one of my customers uses 'applicatifs métiers', which refers to discipline-specific software applications like accountancy, scheduling, analysing, etc.
Although I am generally in favour of asking the person concerned (though even then, some KudoZ colleagues stubbornly refuse to believe what they've said!), in this instance, I would be reluctant to do so, since this is a well-known expression in business FR; the trouble is, it expresses a concept that we don't really use much in EN, and it's difficult to find a concise single term that can be used in all (or multiple) situations.
I know for sure that the explanation I have given in my own suggestion is correct, having had it explained to me by several different, reliable sources; as to the actual term to use, I have merely suggested one that has worked consistently for me and my customers.
There are 228 entries for this term already, many with different contexts to this question, but some the same. Business units/departments are two possibilities.
Automatic update in 00:
Answers
14 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +6
Business areas/sectors
Explanation: To avoid the risk of recreating what was done with (former software), the project team began by demonstrating the capabilities of (new software) to the ( differing/varying) business areas/sectors, which made it possible to open up the discussion on the most relevant indicators and areas of (performance) analysis.
Andrew Bramhall United Kingdom Local time: 06:38 Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 20
peer agreement (net): +6
