Paris 4 DST translations

As promised, here are my translations of the texts you had for your DST today. I'll post your marks on or before June 8. • Le Figaro, 17 January 2012. Winter sales struggle to get going. Anne-Sophie Cathala. Note: ‘soldes’ and ‘ventes’ should both be translated ‘sales’ but that makes the text rather clumsy. I’ve avoided the problem by translating ‘ventes’ as ‘turnover’ but I won’t penalise students who have used ‘sales’ for both. In the first few days turnover stalled or even fell compared to last year. The cold weather finally arrived in France at the weekend – but will it make up for the effects of the crisis on consumer morale? In any case, boots and quilted coats which piled up during the excessively mild autumn started to shift on Saturday, stimulating an otherwise shaky start to the sales. “Turnover was disappointing Wednesday to Sunday – we’d hoped at first it’d be stable,” comments Bernard Morvan, President of the FNH (French national clothing federation) which gets its information from independent businesses. Internet retail, on the other hand, is livelier. Antoine Leloup, President of Brandalley, a luxury clothing discount retailer, was pleased to report a rise of 30%. However Jean-Marc Génis, President of FEH (the clothing brands federation) warns that it’s too early to prejudge how the remaining four weeks of the sales are going to go. Wednesday to Sunday his members (medium-sized businesses and major chains) reported that turnover so far was “disappointing, 2% down on 2011 on average,” – but the winter has barely begun. Sunday – a mixed picture Although on average individual consumers are buying more, this still hasn’t been enough to compensate a drop in the number of shoppers. According to Jean-Michel Silberstein, General Delegate of the CNCC (National center for shopping centers), the number of shoppers in the malls is only just stable compared to last year, despite an improvement of 3% on the first Wednesday. The proliferation of promotions and private “sales”, extended right up to the start of the official sales period, has made the winter sales less attractive – as was feared. After a good Wednesday, marked by turnover increases from 5% to over 10%, Saturday was only “relatively” busy, hardly any better [than what?]. As for the first Sunday of the sales, when major chains, some regional independents, department stores and malls were open, success was variable. In the Rhône-Alpes region, the sales failed to take off despite a communication campaign by the FNH aimed at getting things going.   Le Figaro, 11 January 2012. Marc Landré. France: working hours among the shortest in Europe Unpublished [or ‘new’] study by COE-Rexecode Institute, based on official EU figures, shows real working hours in France amount to 1679 per year, compared to 1904 in Germany. This time it’s been confirmed: working hours in France are definitely among the shortest in Europe (with the notable exception of Finland). Worse still, it’s in France that they have fallen the most over the last decade. These two damning conclusions for the 35-hour week are drawn from a very serious comparative study by the COE-Rexecode Institute, reckoned to be close to employers. COE-Rexecode asked Eurostsat, the European Statistics Institute, to calculate and measure actual annual working hours for full-time employees, on the basis of individual working-hours data collected in each EU country. According to the unpublished calculations, average real annual working hours for full-time employees in France came to 1679 in 2010 – 224 less than Germany, a country France is often compared to in terms of competitiveness. In comparison, Spain has 1798 annual working hours, Italy 1813 and the UK 1856 – considerably more than France in every case. France fails to benefit from demographic advantages For COE-Rexecode this low level of working hours in France is essentially due to the introduction of the 35-hour week in the late 90s. Their evidence is that no other European country has implemented a similar reduction in working hours, imposed by law, and their number of hours worked per year has fallen considerably less than in France. In the last ten years real working hours have fallen by 270 in France compared to e.g. 124 in Germany and 203 in Spain. Linking this with employment rates (up 3.4% in France, compared to 6.3% in Germany) and purchasing power (up 7.3% in France and 13.3% in Germany), COE-Rexecode draws a very simple conclusion which should interest all the candidates (declared or not) in the presidential election: despite its declining demographic, Germany is the classic example of a country which shares work out successfully. “It’s a country which has encouraged negotiation in businesses, developed part-time work, and limited the reduction in real working hours,” concludes COE-Rexecode Director Michel Didier. “That’s led to higher employment rates and increased purchasing power for the population.” By contrast France has failed to make the most of its demographic advantages (the highest birthrate in Europe) and so has lost much of its potential. “Moving to the 35-hour week considerably reduced both full- and part-time working hours, without however giving any significant boost to the overall employment rate, and it checked average spending power.” It’s only a step away from saying the 35-hour week has been a “failure” – a step Michel Didier is reluctant to take, even if he firmly believes it…