When a company realigns its business units, some departments will be cut/eliminated/axed.
Are the three verbs all appropriate here? Can someone help list more words for options?
Thanks.
Cori
I am sure that the language professionals will soon answer you.
I just wanted to let you know that here in the United States, some companies do not want to use such “brutal” words as those. They do not
want to hurt the feelings of those people who are going to lose their jobs.
So a popular euphemism (a nice word for something that is not nice) is “to downsize.” (To make the size smaller) For example, "We are
downsizing in order to adjust to current economic conditions" = Business is terrible, so we are going to fire (dismiss) a lot of people.
UPDATE:
I have just read this in my morning newspaper:
"Chief Executive M____ S____ wrote that there would be some
staff reductions at corporate headquarters …"
Translation: Some people are going to lose their jobs!
Thanks for your suggestion, James.
I completely understand what you’re saying, and I agree with you. But what I am asking here is a pure translation question.
I read some news on the Retures. It seems ELIMINATE works.
If I need to give details of the “downsizing,” can someone give some words that are appropriate here and sound more acceptable?
Actually, I am trying to figure out the difference between “cancel” “cut” “eliminate” and “remove.”
I found some translators use “cancel” like this way: the government has decided to cancel the department of …I don’t think that is correct, but I cannot explain the logic behind my thinking.
I agree: You can cancel a magazine subscription or a concert (as Lady Gaga recently discovered!) or even plans for a new department. But I do not think that you can cancel an existing department.
Here is something that I read that might interest you:
[Mr. X] criticised plans to abolish the Department for Employment.
I have just read this headline: “New Orleans newspaper cuts one-third of staff.” That is, the staff has been downsized.
Therefore, I think (repeat: think) that it might NOT be a good idea to say that a department has been “cut.” Some people might interpret that as meaning that the number of people in that department has been reduced.
It would seem that it would be “safer” to say:
The department has been abolished/ eliminated.
Let’s see what others think.
I disagree,
If it is clear that a department has been cut, then to me that is an indication that the department has been taken away.
To indicate that the employees in that department have been reduced, the sentence would need to use ‘the staff in the x department have been cut’ or ‘the department has been downsized’.
It depends on the situation where the words are used ,but mostly the word eliminated is used.From country to country and company to company use of the word changes.
