French Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the French language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
What would be the best French translation for "rationale", in the sense given on the Wikipedia page (that doesn't have any foreign language equivalent) ? At first I'd think "motivations" or "choix techniques" but I'm really not sure. I'm a French native, but that term has always puzzled me...
The meaning is well described on the page, I'll just add that it is frequently used for software design, to describe the initial choices that led to some design.
I agree with chilladx, especially the sense of "justification," and to connect it to "design rationale" I've seen "dossier de justification de conception" on job descriptions and resumes.
Depends on the context, but I'd use 'la raison', 'les justifications' or 'la logique'.
