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"We will be absent from Tuesday through Saturday."

"We were on vacation from 27 February through 3 March."

 

If through implies inclusivity, what are the proper French prepositions in the above sentences.

 

"We were on vacation from 27 February until 3 March."

 

If until does not imply inclusivity, what are the proper French prepositions in the above.

 

"This contract becomes effective next week."

"I had a zero account balance as of Friday."

 

How do I translate effective and as of in the above sentences.

 

Merci.

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Through : We rarely precise if the date is include or not. It sometimes indicated, for example "vacances du lundi au matin jusqu'au jeudi au soir" or "du lundi au jeudi inclu"

If you want to exclude the last day, you can add "exclus" at the end as in "du lundi au jeudi exclu".

 

Effective : "ce contrat prendra effet la semaine prochaine"

As of : "Mon compte était à zéro à partir de vendredi"

 

To translate "through" or "until", you can generally use either à or jusqu'à. I think that either is essentially ambiguous as to whether or not the last date is included. (I'm not a US speaker, but also suspect this is true in English: the "through" vs "until" distinction probably isn't as clear-cut as you're suggesting.)

 

In French, if you want to make it clear that the last date is inclusive, then you can add the word inclusivement (or actually inclus). So for example:

 

Nous serons absents de lundi à vendredi (inclusivement).

Nous serons absents du 27 février jusqu'au 3 mars (inclusivement).

 

You could leave out the jusqu: as I say, whether it's interpreted as being inclusive or not I think depends more on whether you add the word inclusivement than on the choice of preposition.

 

To translate "as of", you can use à compter de or à partir de. If you mention a specific date on which e.g. a balance is taken, then you can also simply use à or au: for example, au 3 mars = as of 3 March. For example:

 

Le contrat prendra effet à compter/partir de la semaine prochaine.

Au 31 mars/À vendredi dernier, le solde était à zéro.

 

P.S. So for "become effective" you could use prendre effet, devenir effectif, entrer en vigueur...

 

I agree - "until" probably doesn't imply including or excluding the last date of an interval - it's ambiguous.  I might have over-stressed the distinction.  Through, however, does generally imply the interval extends into the last period - like "We'll be here through Thursday" means we will indeed be present on Thursday - a distinction that may not translate well in French.

My interest in these constructions came about while localizing software - something that looked like this:

 

Data of interest from:   <some date provided by a user>

                        through:  <some other date provided by a user>

 

             Effective date:  <some date provided by a user>

 

so, the translation is important as is brevity (ie: computer screen real estate).  I certainly like "de" and "à" - very terse, but I do want to be correct too.

 

Données d'intérêt de:  <date>

                                    à:  <date>    "jusqu'à"?   "à (inclusivement)"?

 

             Date effective:  <date>

 

Thanks for your help.

Ah, OK. If the implication is that the user should enter a date, then use du and au for ·"from" and "to": to a French speaker, this effectively signals that a date is expected. You could indeed add a label saying "inclusivement" (or just the short form "inclus") to make it clear.

 

If there was enough space, for "Data of interest", I'd be slightly tempted to be a bit more explicit and say something like "Afficher les données du..." or a heading like "Données à afficher/à prendre en compte" etc. I suppose "données d'intérêt" is probably OK if the context is clear from the rest of the dialogue box etc.

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