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French to English translations [PRO] Bus/Financial - Business/Commerce (general)
French term or phrase:Solidarité
I'm sure the answer to this is really obvious but I'm struggling with this term in a CSR report. The company's csr approach is based on its core values: Responsabilité, Solidarité et Engagement
Responsibility - Accountability Solidarity - is this used in this way outside France - Philanthropic Responsibility? Engagement
1) Always start with some googling. The company is probably Seb, which is local to me, or a regional "section" of Crédit Mutuel.
2) It appears that the HR/senior management involved in coming up with the values didn't realise that they were spelling out RSE (see my previous Discussion entry below).
3) For a French company in a French context, I have no problem with "Solidarity". For me, it works in a French context but not in an Anglosphere business context.
Anglo shareholders would have a CEO who came up with something as commie as "solidarity" shot, haha!
Hello On this thing (your comment 23:05 3 May), I'm very much for keeping the translation down to 3 words if possible. Certainly, you can find mottos or core values expressed in short phrases and sometimes this is unavoidable.
But I think it's avoidable here and we should go with a 3-word solution. Regards
2) I think to adhere strictly to the spirit of the original, "Responsabilité, Solidarité et Engagement" will have to be translated using words starting with CSR, "Corporate Social Responsibility".
I suppose we're lucky that HR executives in France have the time to come up with such ingenious and hilarious ideas.
Oh yeah, in labour union environments it would work, solidarnosc in Polish etc., it's probably universal, but for my money it doesn't work in business contexts.
Is business the opposite of solidarity? Removing money from people's wallets and making as big a profit as possible.
Also I would say that there is plenty of language mixing going on in Quebec, so second-language transference. Easy to lose sight of what is truly idiomatic...people thinking in French but writing in English.
I get what you're saying, Conor, and I agree that Solidarity might seem to be a somewhat lacklustre or even almost sterile word in English. I guess because I also work closely with labour union environments and their investment concerns in Québec, I've become immersed in the common expressions used around here - and these organizations tend to favour the notion of Solidarity in their EN descriptions. Especially in labour contexts, the term arouses more positive feelings than it likely would in more general English writing. Solidarity, as I use it, has a pretty strong connotation at least for my clients, and it meets the needs of what they're trying to convey (even if it's admittedly not a very sexy term).
The term Solidarity is indeed used by companies in the English-speaking world, even if we don't always know at first glance what the object of that solidarity is. So unless we're provided any further context, I would avoid straying from that term and would not jump to any other conclusions. That said - as much as I agree with Carol that we're not supposed to be discussing other terms in that phrase at the moment - I'd say that the French term Engagement can be tricky to translate without more info from the client. Could be Engagement (shareholder engagement or corporate engagement, in the sense of taking part in dialogues related to responsible investment and changing one's corporate ESG behaviour); or Commitment (to the community, to the climate, to quality, etc.). But if I were thrown this phrase in the dark, lacking any other context and having to translate it quickly, my hunch would be to stick with Engagement, which is increasingly used in ESG and CSR-related areas these days.
I agree with FPC that Solidarity works here, but I wouldn’t use Engagement or Commitment for “Engagement”, they’re not clear in this context. Engagement with what? Commitment to what? If you can get away with it, I’d alter the formula somewhat to say something like Responsibility, Solidarity, and Standing up for what we believe in.
peer agreement (net): +6