Spanish to Canadian French: acabar de can report a recent event rather than finishing a task
Acabo de enviar does not focus on completing the writing
Spanish Acabo de enviar el mensaje reports that the message was sent a short time ago. The verb acabar has a completion meaning in other constructions, but here acabar de plus an infinitive locates an event in the recent past. A translation centred only on finishing the message could confuse sending it with completing its composition.
French Je viens d’envoyer le message preserves the recent sending. Venir de plus an infinitive is the construction for an event that has just happened; it does not require physical movement by the sender. This is standard French grammar that also applies in Canadian French, rather than a special expression used only in Canada.
A finished report and a newly sent report are separate facts
Compare He acabado el informe, which states that the report is finished. J’ai terminé le rapport is a straightforward completion statement. It does not by itself assert that the report was sent, or that completion occurred only a moment before speaking. The Spanish sentences therefore should not both be reduced to the same French “finished” phrase.
This distinction matters in a handover between colleagues. A colleague saying acabo de enviar can be answering why the recipient should now look in their inbox. One saying he acabado can be announcing that the document is ready for the next step. Choosing the wrong construction can make the recipient wait for a document that has not actually been dispatched.
The RAE dictionary distinguishes the recent-event use of acabar from its completion senses. Read the infinitive that follows de as part of the event being located in time. If that infinitive is enviar, sending is the event; the construction does not silently substitute redactar, finish drafting, or aprobar, approve.
A recent event can also be recent relative to another past event
Acababa de enviar el mensaje describes a sending immediately before a past reference point. The corresponding French construction uses the imperfect of venir: Je venais d’envoyer le message. Keeping the present viens would move the reference point back to the speaker’s now and could disrupt the sequence of a retrospective account.
The Office québécois de la langue française discusses this recent-past value through examples paraphrased with venait de. Its explanation supports reading the construction temporally rather than treating every imperfect as an unfinished repeated action. In an account of a reply arriving, the earlier sending can already be complete even though venais itself is imperfect.
For a Spanish email history, separate three questions: was the report completed, was it sent, and was that sending just before now or just before another past event? Acabar can participate in different answers, while the French distinction between terminer and venir de make the distinction visible. Preserving those answers gives the Canadian French reader the same sequence of work and communication as the Spanish author.
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