Starting with the objection is a French virtue here
Where French keeps turning up
French and English share an enormous amount of vocabulary and almost none of the habits that go with it. The result is a particular kind of error: fluent, confident, grammatically defensible, and not quite the sentence you meant.
Faux amis that cost you the sentence
eventually / éventuellement
Reverses the meaning. Éventuellement is possibly; “eventually” is in the end. “I could eventually relocate” commits you to moving when you were flagging a maybe.
actually / actuellement
Actuellement is currently; “actually” contradicts what was just said. “Actually I lead the platform team” corrects the interviewer in a sentence meant only to inform them.
delay / délai
A délai is a deadline or a lead time. “The delay was two weeks” announces slippage when you meant the schedule. In a project story this one changes the whole verdict.
inconvenient / inconvénient
An inconvénient is a drawback. “The main inconvenient of this approach” should be “the main drawback”. Alongside it: déception is disappointment, not deception.
demand / demander
Demander is simply to ask. “I demanded a meeting with the client” is a very different sentence about your working style than the one you intended.
sympathetic, assist, formation
Sympathique is friendly; assister à is to attend; une formation is training. “I assisted a formation with a very sympathetic team” is three misses in nine words.
Critique first is a French virtue and an English risk
French education trains a specific shape of thought: state the problem, examine the objection, and arrive at the synthesis. Leading with the difficulty is not pessimism — it is the evidence that you have understood the question properly, and an answer that skipped it would be shallow.
An American or British interviewer is listening with a different template. They expect the position first and the qualifications after. So an answer that opens “the difficulty with that approach is…” is scored before you reach the synthesis, and what gets written down is: raises problems, unclear whether they can deliver. The same sentence, inverted — “yes, and the thing to watch is…” — carries identical content and reads as judgement rather than resistance.
The “sorry for my English” opener
Common, courteous, and it hands the interviewer a frame for the next 40 minutes. They were not going to think about your English until you asked them to. Skip it.
Enthusiasm is scored in English
French professional register is measured on purpose; visible excitement reads as unserious. American interviews score motivation explicitly, and a correct, measured answer to “why us?” is filed as indifference.
Register: formal French, stiff English
French has a genuine formal register — vous, the conditional, whole ritual formulas — and English mostly does not. Translating the formality produces sentences that are grammatically impeccable and socially wrong: “I would be delighted to have the opportunity to present my candidature for this position” is a written formula walking into a spoken conversation. English signals respect through warmth and directness instead: “I’m really interested in this role, and here’s why.”
The same gap works in reverse, and the reverse is where people get caught. Casual English from an interviewer is not informality about the outcome.
“Does that make sense?” — not a test of you
Anglo speakers check their own clarity constantly. It asks whether they explained it well, not whether you understood. “Yes” with no follow-up leaves an opening unused.
“What’s your read on that?” — your assessment
A request for an opinion with reasoning, asked casually. Answering only with the considerations, without landing on a view, is the classic French-shaped miss.
“I’m going to push you on that” — good news
It means they are interested enough to test it. Not hostility, and not a signal to retreat. Holding your position, with a reason, is what is being measured.
“No worries”, “we’ll be in touch” — filler, and non-committal
The first means nothing at all. The second is a polite close and not a promise, in either direction.
What Cue puts on screen during the round
Cue is a Chrome extension. You click its icon in the tab the interview is running in, and Chrome gives that one tab’s audio to it — nothing joins the call, no participant is added, and the microphone is never requested. It works in Google Meet, Zoom on the web and Microsoft Teams on the web, and not in the desktop clients.
The interviewer’s line appears as it was recognised, with the same line in French under it if that is the language you picked from the 68 in the window. The pair sits in two buttons in the header, changeable mid-call, and setting both to the same language switches the second line off. When a question is put to you, a short card appears: an answer shape, not a paragraph to recite, written in whichever language you read fastest, with the line it grew from attached so you can check what it is answering.
The part that helps most with the ordering problem is that the card leads with the position and puts the qualification after it. Seeing that shape repeatedly is a faster correction than any advice. Write a short note before the call — the role, the two projects you want to reach — and the cards stop being general. There is a field for your own question too, so “was that an objection?” can be typed rather than asked.
The limits
It never hears you, so it cannot correct your English as you speak and does not try. There is no recording, no summary, no notes, and no way to give it a CV or any other document — the only context is your note and the last minutes of the call. Recognised lines and answers are kept 30 days and then deleted automatically; audio is never stored, because it never reaches us.
And a card is not a verdict. A model can write confident English about your architecture and be wrong about it, and an interviewer’s second “why?” finds that out quickly. The value is in answering the question that was actually asked, in your own words — everything else on this page is there to make that easier, not to replace it.
FAQ
This language, specifically.
Should I read the interviewer in French or in English?+
Whichever is faster for you, and you can change it mid-call from the two buttons in the window header. Many French speakers set both to the same language, which turns the second line off, and keep the English on screen — the problem is usually a fast or unfamiliar accent rather than the language itself.
Can the card be written in French while the call is in English?+
Yes, and the two settings are independent. The question stays in the language it was asked in, and the answer is written in the language you chose, so you can be interviewed in English and read in French.
I tend to start with the problem before the answer. Will the card change that?+
It will show you the other order. The cards lead with the position and put the qualification after it, which is the shape an English-speaking interviewer expects. Seeing it happen in a live call, several times, does more than reading about it — but the habit remains yours to change.
Does it catch faux amis like “eventually” or “delay”?+
Not in your own speech, which it cannot hear. It helps in the other direction: when the interviewer uses one of those words, the recognised line is on screen so you can read the English sense rather than the French one, and you can type your own question about it into the window.
Is my accent a problem for the recognition?+
French-accented English is handled routinely, and in any case it is the interviewer being recognised, not you. Where recognition slips, in every language, is names, acronyms and product nouns — which is why the original line stays on screen beside the reading.
Let the round be about your work.
Trippi Cue is in the Chrome Web Store. The interviewer arrives in your language, and your answer is written in the one you pick.