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"The interest rate is expected to increase from three percent to five percent next month."

Is the correct translation the following?

On prévoit que le taux d'intêret augmentera de trois pour cent à cinq pour cent le mois prochain.

Note that the meaning is that three percent is the interest rate now, and five percent is the interest rate after the change. The interpretation is not that the interest rate will increase between 3-5%. This seems to have created a confusion in my last post.

2 Answers 2

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Here is a way to avoid the ambiguity:

On prévoit que le taux d’intérêt passera de trois à cinq pour cent le mois prochain.

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  • What about if we want to use augmenter? Can we still do it?
    – user11550
    Nov 26, 2016 at 0:09
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    Yes, …le taux d'intérêt augmentera, passant de trois à cinq pour cent…
    – jlliagre
    Nov 26, 2016 at 0:13
  • If I just say "... augmentera de trois à cinq pour cent", does it work? Can it be interpreted both ways?
    – user11550
    Nov 26, 2016 at 0:20
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    Your sentence might mean "it will increase from a value lying between two and five percent". You'd rather say le taux d'intérêt actuellement de trois pour cent augmentera de deux pour cent le mois prochain.
    – jlliagre
    Nov 26, 2016 at 0:29
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A language-agnostic way to remove the ambiguity is to use points instead of percentage.

Le taux d'intérêt devrait gagner deux points le mois prochain.

You can also replace gagner with augmenter de, grimper, prendre, and so on.

If you don't want to use points, you must make sure to avoid the De X à Y idiom, because it's ambiguous in this context. It can mean both "from X to Y" and "In the range [X; Y]".

I suggest the following alternative:

Le taux d'intérêt, actuellement de 3%, devrait monter à 5% le mois prochain.

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