Luxury giants and the crisis (correction)

Luxury giants and the crisis (correction) (1)

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Luxury giants and the crisis (correction)
Message de moonlit-sunset posté le 19-10-2008 à 16:01:44 (S | E | F)
Bonjour, pouvez-vous me dire si ce texte est correct (Signalez-moi les fautes sans me donner les réponses s'il vous plait). En particulier, les morceaux en vert sont ceux dont je doute le plus :

In 2008, luxury giants should resist to the crisis (Or : should withstand / should get through the crisis)

European luxury brands seemed to embark into a difficult (or : hard) year. If consumers should cut down on expenses, wouldn't they do so uppermost on products as Carter watches or Vuitton bags ?

Since in the end of January, Carter's owner Richemont published (or : released) disappointing results. At the same time, the Italian shoemaker Tod's set off the alarm on a slowing down of the demand.

But on Wednesday, LVMH, the number one of industry, announced a progression of 8% of its net profit to 2 billions euro. Despite of an economic environment deemed (or : judged, considered) unstable, the group intends to continue its development in 2008.

This confidence is based on some important ("enseignements" en français, sens figuré)....... First, LVMH could increase its prices in dollars, which seemed to suggest that its wealthy American clients could afford to continue to spend. Secondly, the Asian demand continues its growth at a steady rythme. In 2007 for example, China and Hongkong became the first market of Carter watches, in front of the USA (or : front the USA).

Merci

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Modifié par moonlit-sunset le 19-10-2008 16:02

Réponse: Luxury giants and the crisis (correction) de cecilward, postée le 19-10-2008 à 17:04:23 (S | E)
should resist to

* "resist to the crisis" is not grammatical, needs to be just "resist the crisis". (But: compare usage with the noun "resistance" - "resistance to attack" for example is correct.)

Using either "withstand" or "get through" is fine.

But "resist the crisis" may not give the meaning you intend. The verb "resist" can sometimes be interpreted as dynamic/active (actively doing something) - "They fought bravely to resist the attack" means that the defenders _did_ something, they actively resisted. However, "this watch can resist water to a depth of 100m" seems fine to me, and "water-resistant" and "stain-resistant" are common. So this is a difficult subject.

Also the ambiguity of "should" in English presents a problem particularly with a possibly dynamic/active verb such as resist, because "should" can either express obligation or prediction/expectation.

"You should eat more fruit. It's good for you. (obligation)
She should be here by now? What's keeping her?" (prediction/expectation).

Of course to be safe, you could say "giants should _be able to_ resist/withstand/get through the crisis".

* "embark into a" - is ungrammatical, and I'm not really sure what meaning was intended. The idiom required would be "embark on" (original meaning "get on board a ship" and so "begin a journey" now sometimes metaphorically extended to mean something like "begin a project/activity" but you can not "embark on a year" as the argument can not be a duration of time since it retains the restrictions from its original "embark on a voyage" usage.) "The government has embarked upon the daunting process of restructuring the banking system" (metaphor - "begun a process", "started a journey towards achieving a result").

- "difficult" or "hard" - either is fine.

- simply "since the end of January"

- "set off the alarm" is possibly too literal, clichés such as "set alarm bells ringing", "raised the alarm" all meaning "signalled a problem to the attention of others", "alerted others" etc might be safer as they are such clichés that they are not going to be understood literally. You may prefer to avoid clichéed writing by saying "alerted (us/the industry/ etc..) to a slowing down.

- the preposition "on" can not be used here in "set off the alarm on" as that immediately made me think of something literal, for example an alarm bell was physically "ON" for example a clock. "She set off the alarm in the building when she went back in." (ie. in the security system). Instead of the preposition on you might wish to use "concerning" or "about". Example: "she raised the alarm about the situation" (metaphorical, meaning "alerted other people").

- *"a progression of 8%" - I didn't understand this part of the sentence. Do you mean "announced an increase of 8% in its net profit to 2 billion euro."? Note "billion" is not pluralised after numbers, "two billion" but "the gorvnment spends billions".

- *"despite of" needs to be simply "despite".

- deemed, judged, considered are all fine.

- "which seemed" - I'm not sure why the past tense is used here. If the judgement is made in the present then it needs to read "which seems".

I'm wondering if the whole sentence is meant to be in the past tense,
"LVMH was able to increase its prices, which seemed..." (past tense - followed by past tense)
"LVMH could increase its prices, which seems" (present tense - followed by present)
The problem is that the word "could" is highly ambiguous, and could mean
"LVMH was able to increase"
"LVMH may possibly increase"

* "rhythm" doesn't seem to fit the sense. (rhythm being used metaphorically for repeating events in time.) Perhaps "at a steady rate/pace".

*"market of" - needs to be "market for".

*"the first market" - does this this means "biggest market"?

* "in front of the USA" is ungrammatical, and I'm not sure what was intended

Réponse: Luxury giants and the crisis (correction) de moonlit-sunset, postée le 19-10-2008 à 17:23:11 (S | E)
Thank you for replying, cecilward

Here is the corrected text :

In 2008, luxury giants should withstand the crisis (should = prediction)

European luxury brands seemed to embark on (to say : s'engager dans. J'ai aussi pensé à : to go into) a difficult year. If consumers should cut down on expenses, wouldn't they do so uppermost on products as Carter watches or Vuitton bags ?

Since in the end of January (to say : fin janvier déjà, not 'depuis fin janvier' : Already at the end of January ?), Carter's owner Richemont published (or : released) disappointing results. At the same time, the Italian shoemaker Tod's raised the alarm about a slowing down of the demand.

But on Wednesday, LVMH, the number one of industry, announced an increase of 8% of its net profit to 2 billion euro. Despite an economic environment deemed unstable, the group intends to continue its development in 2008.

This confidence is based on some important ('enseignements' en français, sens figuré)lessons (?). First, LVMH was able to increase its prices in dollars, which seems to suggest that its wealthy American clients could afford to continue to spend. Secondly, the Asian demand continues its growth at a steady pace. In 2007 for example, China and Hongkong became the biggest market for Carter watches, in front of the USA (or : front the USA : to say : le premier marché, devant les Etats-Unis, ie China/Hongkong are the first market, and then the USA comes).

Merci

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Modifié par moonlit-sunset le 19-10-2008 17:24

Réponse: Luxury giants and the crisis (correction) de cecilward, postée le 20-10-2008 à 14:42:47 (S | E)
- returning once again (see my earlier comments) about "embark on a year" not being acceptable, as "a year" is not a process/task/project. Do you simply need "brands seemed to be experiencing difficulties at the start of the year". The use of past tense in "seemed" immediately puts the reference point back to January, and we think about what the companies were experiencing at that time.

- *"in the end of January" is ungrammatical and needs to be "at the end of January" (but contrast "in the last week of January" for example)

- "Already at the end of January" or "Even at the end of January" would be fine.

- "released" or "published" are both fine in this context for company financial statements/press releases/reports etc etc

In fact just as I wrote that sentence I heard on the television news
"The latest ministry of defence reports released today about flying saucers"

- Carter? Do you mean Cartier?

- *"the demand" - must not use the definite article here, so simply "demand". English is a nightmare here! French likes the definite article A LOT. Of course you will also see "the economy" (of some particular country assumed from the context), "the government" and "the NHS" (which can be used without the article, for example in compounds such as "government ministers"), but "music"/"physics", "poverty"/"crime", "cheese"/"ham". Unfortunately it's just something else that makes your life difficult.

- As for "confidence is based on some important x" (enseignements)
We are talking about reasons why confidence is justified/evidence for confidence being justified.
We could try say
?"confidence is based on some important evidence:" which is somehow not good as "important evidence" seems odd, because how is the evidence "important"?

however something like
"confidence is based on some important observations" - if someone noticed that some things that were important/significant, and that then gave them a reason to be confident.

I was thinking about the use of "lessons", as in "learn a lesson" meaning have an experience and then change behaviour afterwards, especially a bad experience which causes people to change the way things are done (eg "The government learned important lessons after a horrific train crash in 1998, and brought in new safety regulations". The word lessons could only be used here if you refered to events before that January that influenced later opinions or behaviour.

- *"in front of the USA" - would have to be "ahead of the USA" (metaphor: a race, or a league table).

I think that invoking a metaphor is fine here, and if you are introducing a list of things ranked in order it would get very awkward to try saying "greater than" over and over again, to say the least.
"Obama seems to be well ahead of John McCain." (race metaphor)
but note
"Obama is maintaining his _lead over_ McCain" (race metaphor again, which I just heard on the tv news; an idiom related to the noun "lead", eg "a lead over", compare "a victory over" etc, but note "McCain leads Obama by 5%"/"has a 5% lead over".)

French premier is of course borrowed into English and is used often, but as an adjective means something means "best" (but note the English nouns "a premier" (type of politician), and "a premiere" - an event, a first showing of a film etc, the latter also giving an English verb "his latest movie was premiered at Cannes").

"ahead of" could also refer to time,
the russians launched their rocket two weeks ahead of the americans
and I'm assuming that you don't mean that watches were sold in China earlier before (at an earlier time) they were first sold in America.

That was a difficult passage, and it's no wonder that you experienced difficulties with it. Google could perhaps be useful here. Using google searches for phrases enclosed in "" can perhaps be useful to check frequency of usage or to find examples and look at the context.

Réponse: Luxury giants and the crisis (correction) de moonlit-sunset, postée le 20-10-2008 à 20:02:01 (S | E)
thank you a lot cecilward for taking the time to correct me ! I read your explanations with attention and I hope I won't do these mistakes again !

Réponse: Luxury giants and the crisis (correction) de cecilward, postée le 20-10-2008 à 22:14:22 (S | E)
You're welcome.

As a language learner myself (English is my native language), I find that _searching_ for texts that contain examples is really important.

An absolutely unbelievably fantastic resource is the search engine at Lien Internet
for English.

I use google a lot to search for examples of usage. Remember that in google you can search for phrases with "" and can use ~ too to permit matching by synonyms.

Inter-Language dictionaries are SO useless, in fact dangerous because they often don't explain usage rules correctly. Better to use an English-English language dictionary to check English words, not an French-English or English-French dictionary unless it contains lots and lots of English language examples.

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