Mots Maudits #15: Activité

“Activité” is another one of those words that is superficially similar to its English equivalent, with the same etymology and many equivalent definitions, but whose usage differs in unhelpfully subtle ways that can make translating corporate communication unexpectedly perilous.

Larousse defines “activité” in this context as follows:

Meanwhile, Oxford Languages defines “activity” as “a thing that a person or group does or has done”, such as a "firm's marketing activities".

There is already a subtle distinction here; the French definition mentions “action in a specific field” whereas the English definition implies that “activity” can be anything that an employee of the company might do. As such, French copywriters are more likely to use “activité” to refer to the company’s actual productive actions – malting, for example – whereas in English we tend to use it with a qualifier, as in the above definition, to cite a particular thing that people in the company do, which may not be related to the firm’s actual core competency.

Moreover, in French, the word is often synonymous with the company’s various divisions or subsidiaries, such as in this example from transport infrastructure specialist, Colas:

Note the use of “intervenir”. 😉

To illustrate the point, if you Google the phrase "Our activities in Europe", you will find a broad selection of French websites using this English expression in a typically Gallic way, as well as texts using the expression in the English sense, where the author is explaining what their work entails or the type of events they organise rather than talking about their industry.