We were commissioned to translate from French into English the minutes of a board of directors’ meeting of a leading company in the payment and transaction services sector.
A Strategic and Performance-Oriented Agenda
The meeting covered by these minutes focused mainly on three key topics:
-
preparation of the investor day,
-
presentation of the audit committee’s report, including the unaudited results of the past financial year,
-
and presentation of the innovation and strategy committee’s report, centered on the company’s three-year plan for profitable growth.
The translation required a thorough grasp of financial and strategic vocabulary, along with particular care in rendering verb tenses and expressions specific to governance language. The same precision underpins other corporate projects, such as the translation of an asset financing contract, where every term binds the parties.
Terminological Accuracy and Stylistic Precision
The terminology, at the crossroads of corporate law, corporate finance, and strategic management, had to be translated with rigor to ensure readability and compliance in the English version of the minutes.
The formal tone typical of governance documents also had to be preserved, while ensuring consistency with shareholder-facing reporting and communications such as press releases — disclosures whose framing, for a French listed group, is overseen by the Autorité des marchés financiers. The sensitive nature of such internal records also calls for constant attention to confidentiality and conflicts of interest.
📌 Key Contextual Translations
-
conseil d’administration → board of directors
-
résultats non audités → unaudited results
-
la totalité des objectifs annuels ont été atteints → all the annual objectives had been achieved
-
excédent brut opérationnel (EBO) → gross operating profit (EBITDA)
-
prévoit d’accélérer encore sa trajectoire de croissance rentable → plans to further accelerate its profitable growth trajectory
-
communiqués de presse → press releases
❓ FAQ: translating French board minutes into English
How is consistency kept with shareholder communications?
The minutes must align with the group's press releases and investor-day materials. A recurring phrase such as "trajectoire de croissance rentable" is fixed once as profitable growth trajectory and reused across every shareholder-facing document.
