French text to speech for business news: how Md€, T3, pb and the CAC 40 get read

If you publish business news in French, or run a French edition of an English-language outlet, you already know the shorthand. A five-line earnings brief can hold a turnover figure in milliards, a change in percent, an abbreviated quarter, a central bank move in basis points and two institutional acronyms. On screen, a reader who knows the conventions takes it in at a glance. Read aloud, each abbreviation has to become a phrase, and one slip ("one point five M D euros") is enough to lose a listener who chose audio precisely to save time.

French has its own traps here, and they are not the English ones. Below is what our text preparation does with real French financial copy, and what it deliberately does not do.

Rules, not guesswork

Before a voice reads anything, WeDispatch runs the text through a preparation step written as explicit rules. Each recognised pattern (a number followed by a multiplier and a currency, a quarter followed by a year, an acronym from a known table) is rewritten the way a French presenter would say it. The guiding principle is blunt: when in doubt, leave it. A rule that is wrong one time in ten introduces errors that were not there, and nobody can trace them. Our French text to speech page explains why we chose rules over asking a language model to spell out numbers.

The examples below are not a staged demo. They are the exact outputs of that preparation step, run on the day this post was published. Translations are given in brackets for readers who do not speak French.

Amounts: millions, billions and currencies

• "1,5 Md€" becomes un virgule cinq milliard d'euros (1.5 billion euros)
• "154 Mds€" becomes cent cinquante-quatre milliards d'euros
• "3 000 Md$" becomes trois mille milliards de dollars (3 trillion dollars)
• "500 K€" becomes cinq cent mille euros
• "1,2 M€" becomes un virgule deux million d'euros
• "12,80 €" becomes douze euros quatre-vingts
• "0,85 €" becomes quatre-vingt-cinq centimes

Two details show what "reading correctly" means in French specifically. Milliard stays singular after 1.5, because French grammar only switches to the plural from two upwards; "un virgule cinq milliards" is a mistake many tools make. And the "de" after a quantity noun (un milliard d'euros) is inserted, because million and milliard are nouns in French, not adjectives as in English. Every spelling French newsrooms use is recognised: Md, Mds, Mrd, Mrds and a capital K. The comma as a decimal separator and the space as a thousands separator, both standard in French, are read as such. Our post on currencies in French text to speech covers money more broadly.

Changes and rates

• "+4,7 %" becomes plus quatre virgule sept pour cent
• "-0,4 %" becomes moins zéro virgule quatre pour cent
• "3,75 % l'an" becomes trois virgule soixante-quinze pour cent l'an (a year)
• "de 8 à 9,5 %" becomes de huit à neuf virgule cinq pour cent
• "25 pb" becomes vingt-cinq points de base (25 basis points)
• "12 % vs 2025" becomes douze pour cent contre deux mille vingt-cinq

The basis point is a good test: only financial writing uses "pb", and a voice left alone would read two letters. The "vs" of results tables becomes contre, which is what a French anchor says. See also percentages and rates.

Periods and prices

• "au T3 2026" becomes au troisième trimestre deux mille vingt-six (in Q3 2026)
• "Au S1 2026" becomes Au premier semestre deux mille vingt-six (in H1 2026)
• "2 400 $/oz" becomes deux mille quatre cents dollars l'once (an ounce)
• "450 €/1 000 l" becomes quatre cent cinquante euros les mille litres
• "CAC 40" becomes CAC quarante, and "7 512,34 points" is read in full

Unit prices (per tonne, per megawatt hour, per ounce) use the definite article, as French traders say them: l'once, not par once, and never "slash oz".

Institutional acronyms

"La BCE relève ses taux" becomes La Banque centrale européenne relève ses taux the first time, then stays "la BCE", as a journalist would write it. The same goes for PIB (GDP), TVA (VAT), INSEE and about a hundred other acronyms common in French news. Expansion only happens when the preceding article agrees with the acronym's grammatical gender: an unexpanded acronym is understood, a gender mismatch is heard. "Prix HT" becomes prix hors taxes (price before tax). The logic is described in our post on acronyms in French text to speech.

Four cases we leave as they are

This is the most useful section for an editor, because it tells you where to listen.

"S1" without a year

"Au S1 2026" is expanded; "au S1" on its own is not. Without the year, S1 could be a car model, a league tier or a meeting room. The rule needs the context that removes doubt. Write "au premier semestre" in the copy, or add an entry to your lexicon.

"Insee" in lower case

"INSEE" in capitals is recognised and expanded. "Insee", the spelling the institute itself uses and many newsrooms follow, is left untouched and goes to the voice as written. That is not necessarily a problem: the full name is long, and some editors would rather keep the short form. Listen to how your chosen voice says it.

Acronyms with no matching article

"Les PME" (small and medium businesses) is not expanded: the table holds the singular form, and a plural article does not agree with it, so the rule abstains. "Ebitda" is in no table and goes through as written. In both cases the voice decides how to say it.

Ratio slashes

"Le ratio cours/bénéfice" (price/earnings ratio) keeps its slash, and the voice interprets it. A slash between two words can mean "over", "or" or "and" depending on the sentence, so we do not rewrite it. Writing "le rapport cours sur bénéfice" settles it at the source.

Fixing it once

Any of the above is fixed once, in the account's pronunciation lexicon, on plans that include it: "S1 → premier semestre", "Ebitda → excédent brut d'exploitation". The entry applies to every later article, and the text shown on screen does not change. For a business desk, the most efficient routine is to take one week of articles, listen to them end to end once, and note the forms specific to your house style. For how audio fits specialist publishing more generally, read our post on the trade press and B2B media.

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