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French to English translations [PRO] Bus/Financial - Business/Commerce (general)
French term or phrase:attribution d'actions
This is a company which is planning various employee incentive schemes of the stock option type.
It may give its employees (and freelancers) droits de souscription (to shares), which it refers to as "warrants" for some reason. It proposes to attribuer these.
Or it may offer them options de souscription d'actions. It also proposes to attribuer these.
Or it may just give them shares (hedged about with various conditions), under a plan d'attribution gratuite d'actions.
The problem I have is what word to use for "attribuer" / "attribution". It appears, from my searching, that formal language in this area often uses "allot" when talking of shares... but I'm dubious that you can or should speak of "allotting" warrants or stock options. To me the most uncomplicated verb for the latter context appears to be "allocate".
It would be ideal to use the same verb for all categories, and would have the merit of not potentially making the client puzzled about the use of different EN verbs for the same FR verb.
But can you "allocate" shares, or does this sound wrong? If so, why? In this question (https://www.proz.com/kudoz/french-to-english/finance-general... rkillings, who often comes across as quite stern, but often also credible, sternly rebukes an answerer for tranlsating attribution as "allocation", sternly saying that it must be "grant".
But if "allocate" must be sternly rebuked in this manner, doesn't that mean that "allot" should also be rebuked with similar sternness?
PS if anyone can tell me why, when talking of shares, "grant" is so right, and "allocate" is so wrong, I'd thank them for the enlightment.
To expand on an earlier point, "allocate" also implies purpose constrained by circumstance; you allocate something because you have to; whereas "grant" is more self-contained; you grant something because you want to.
Also, it would be odd to speak of allocating wages & salaries, which aren't allotted but paid because earned. Those amounts are due and therefore can't be apportioned in the sense of funds or resources. Options, warrants & shares are not quite the same, but they are a form of payment or benefit and sort of lie in between something a company can distribute as it needs or sees fit and something it must pay or settle.
Granted, this risks getting bogged down in semantics and there are allot of ways to look at it. Usage often warrants several options with plenty to share. Take your pick ╮(. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)╭
@Wolf, BDF. Yes, makes sense. It's the difference therefore between a wizard deciding, of their own motion, to create magic baubles out of thin air, and a warehouse manager who happens to have a crate full of non-magic baubles which must be disposed of in some way. In the former case an act of volition is involved, but not in the latter.
I think that Wolf is right about allocation implying a fixed quantity. The number of shares already issued is a fixed quantity, even if more might be issued in the future However, it can also apply to a fixed number of recipients. So, if a company has 100 employees and shares are distributed between them under their contract of employment and according to a particular formula, I'd use "allot" or "allocation", rather than "grant". Granting also implies benevolence, rather than giving something as of right. Granting can also be done under duress, but the point is that it is not done according to some preset duty.
I'm with Steve on "grant" (another option I've seen is "award"). It may just be usage, but here's how I think about it: warrants, options or shares are granted—given—to employees as payment or benefits, whereas funds and resources are allocated/alloted—distributed—for a particular purpose or to meet a specific need.
Employees are not entitled to warrants/options/shares, which are benefits, not assets or resources, and so are granted or awarded rather than allocated.
Also, "allocate/allot" implies fixed quantity and scarcity, but in theory at least there's no limit to the number of shares that can be issued, and thus no limit either on the number of warrants/options that can be created.
This isn't to say that "allocate/allot" is outright wrong, but insofar as nuance and usage matter (and I think they matter a lot), I would go with rkillings, who is rarely wrong on such questions, and stick with "grant".
Btw, ghits are not a reliable statistic, so I wouldn't use them as confirmation of usage. For that, you'd need a more sophisticated concordance or collocation tool.
My gut feeling says, "grant" is the right word whereas "allocate" somehow sounds wrong for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Google seems to be with me here - "grant share options" scores 23,700 hits (supposedly) while "allocate share options" scores 538.
I can't see what rkillings wrote - the link doesn't work.
I agree with Phil. "Allocate" is not only fine, it is most likely the correct answer. It makes the most sense when you consider that companies generally set aside a fixed percentage of their shares for this type of plan, meaning that the number of shares is set (unless the shareholders later issue more shares). Thus, "allocate" is used to indicate assigning a specific number of a fixed number of shares to a certain employee, who has qualified for them, just as in a budget, another fixed number, a certain portion is assigned, or allocated, to a specific need.
Allocate is perfectly OK in my opinion, and so are grant, award, and allot. I'd post this as an answer, except I feel it was dealt with adequately in the previous question, even though the asker rejected the answers.
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Answers
1 hr confidence: peer agreement (net): +5
allocation of shares
Explanation: Seems reasonable.
Bashiqa France Local time: 03:02 Works in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 66
peer agreement (net): +5