Breakdown of Quand ils auront terminé leurs recherches, ils chercheront un travail d’ingénieur ou d’avocat.
Questions & Answers about Quand ils auront terminé leurs recherches, ils chercheront un travail d’ingénieur ou d’avocat.
Auront terminé is the future perfect (futur antérieur): they will have finished.
French uses the future perfect to talk about an action that will be completed before another future action:
- Quand ils auront terminé leurs recherches, ils chercheront un travail...
- When they have finished their research, they will look for a job...
Using ont terminé (present perfect / passé composé) would be wrong here, because the time reference is clearly in the future (they haven’t finished yet).
In English you say:
- When they have finished..., they *will look for a job.*
The first clause uses a present perfect, the second uses will.
In French, when the main idea is in the future, both clauses normally take a future tense:
- Quand ils auront terminé (future perfect) ..., ils chercheront (simple future).
You do not say: Quand ils auront terminé..., ils cherchent... in this meaning.
For future time with quand, use a future tense, not the present.
Recherches can mean:
- academic or scientific research, or
- investigations, inquiries, searching for information more generally.
In many real-life contexts, finir / terminer ses recherches suggests finishing some period of study or research work (e.g. university research, thesis, lab work).
It’s in the plural because French often uses les recherches for research activities in general, much like studies in English:
- terminer ses études = finish one’s studies
- terminer ses recherches = finish one’s research
So leurs recherches = their research activities (not several separate “researches” in the English sense).
- leur recherche = their search / their piece of research (one thing)
- leurs recherches = their research activities / their research projects / investigations (plural)
Grammatically:
- leur (no s) is used before a singular noun: leur recherche
- leurs (with s) is used before a plural noun: leurs recherches
In this sentence, recherches is plural, so the possessive must also be plural: leurs recherches.
Les recherches = the research, without saying whose.
Leurs recherches clearly specifies who is doing the research: their research.
Since the subject is ils (they), leurs recherches means the research that they are doing / have been doing.
Using les recherches would sound more general and less personal, as if you were talking about “the research” in an abstract sense.
In French, the verb chercher already contains the idea of “looking for”.
You do not add pour:
- chercher un travail = to look for a job
- chercher ses clés = to look for one’s keys
- chercher une solution = to look for a solution
Chercher pour un travail would sound like a direct translation from English and is ungrammatical in this sense.
Yes, there are nuances:
un travail
- Very general: work or a job
- Can mean work as an activity, not necessarily a specific position.
un emploi
- A more formal / standard word for a job / employment.
- Common in official or professional contexts: chercher un emploi, offre d’emploi.
un poste
- A specific position within an organisation: a post / a role.
- Example: un poste d’ingénieur dans une grande entreprise.
In everyday speech, chercher un travail and chercher un emploi are both common. Chercher un poste is more specific.
Both structures exist, but they’re slightly different.
un travail d’ingénieur / d’avocat
- Literally: an engineer’s job / a lawyer’s job
- Means a job in engineering / in law, i.e. a job of that type or field.
un travail comme ingénieur / comme avocat
- More literally: a job as an engineer / as a lawyer.
- Focuses on the role they will have.
In practice, both are understandable and often equivalent.
The de + profession structure is very common in French to mean “a job in that profession”.
Here we have un travail d’ingénieur ( = un travail de ingénieur → d’ingénieur).
- de here means roughly “of the type / in the field of”:
- un travail d’ingénieur = a job of the engineer type / an engineer-type job.
- When de introduces a profession used as a class or type, we normally don’t add another article:
- un travail d’ingénieur
- un poste de professeur
- un salaire d’ouvrier
Writing un travail de un ingénieur would be ungrammatical; de + un does not work like that. Instead, de directly links travail to the profession noun acting as a kind of label.
This is just elision:
- Before a vowel sound (like the i in ingénieur), de becomes d’:
- de ingénieur → d’ingénieur
- de avocat → d’avocat
The same happens with je → j’, le → l’, etc.
Pronunciation-wise, d’ingénieur is smoother and more natural.
Because ingénieur and avocat here name the type of job, not the number of people.
- un travail d’ingénieur = an engineering job (type of job)
- They will each look for a job of that type.
We are not saying “jobs belonging to several engineers” (which might call for plurals), but “a job as an engineer” for each person.
So the noun stays singular to refer to the profession as a category.
Yes. Lorsque and quand are very close in meaning when they introduce a time clause:
- Quand ils auront terminé leurs recherches, ils chercheront…
- Lorsque ils auront terminé leurs recherches, ils chercheront…
(usually written Lorsqu’ils auront terminé… with elision)
Lorsque is often a bit more formal or literary, but both are correct in this sentence.