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French to English translations [Non-PRO] Bus/Financial - Management
French term or phrase:Irritant
This is from a table in a document relating to the improvements a manager can make when performing his role. It comes under the heading "Priority criteria". There are two instances:
"Haute irritant client final" and "Sensible pour les clients principaux. Irritants pour les clients internes".
The first relates to the improvement of the team's preventive actions, and the second to the delivery of reports within 48 hours.
I've come across "charming" or "delightful" as translations for "irritant", but nothing seems to fit here.
Sadly, AFAIK, mods can't intervene on personal glossaries — you could always submit a support ticket, but I rather think it would be a HUGE task, trying to correct all the erros in personal glossaries!
There is a personal glossary entry (erroneous) with "charming, charmingly, delightful, lovely" as definitions for "irritant." I dug a little deeper, and it seems the owner is no longer involved in Proz. The glossary has 35000+ entries, but most have no definitions. So, it's just taking up space and, in this case, giving bad info. Perhaps one of our moderators could take a look and suggest a clean-up.
Thanks for all your help. The document is full of errors such as the "haute" one. Although I had never heard of "irritant" meaning anything other than annoying etc., there is a glossary entry giving it as "charming, delightful..." which confused me.
it is not a matter of it being irritating to have to make improvements but more a value judgement on the extent to which the particular problem requiring improvement is serious - in some cases, something or other clearly gets under the end client's skin, in others it is a sensitive area for big clients and in the last case the problem gets on the nerves on "clients" within the company
"irritant" is never "charming" etc. but then "haute irritant" (sic) is total nonsense in French. You could say 'fort irritant" or some such thing but never "haute" with an "e" on the end - however, they are clearly talking about major/minor issues
charming and delightful have nothing to do with irritant (French for annoying, irritating, ...).
If "haute - irritant - client final" are under three different headings, it may just qualify the importance given to the problem by the customer, as Tony noted.
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Answers
5 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +4
irritant
annoying
Explanation: Surely it's just the 'ordinary' meaning of 'irritant', i.e. annoying (or irksome, tiresome, etc.)?
In other words, for some people this may be a major problem, whilst for others it is mildly/very annoying.
Tony M France Local time: 20:17 Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 20
Grading comment
Thank you
Notes to answerer
Asker: I was thinking that it should be positive, but perhaps you're right - the "priority criteria" might mean that it is the fact that it is annoying that means improvements must be made. The table is quite confusing in that respect. Thanks!
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +4