French term (edited): installations courants forts, courants faibles

Need to be very careful here! Francis may well be right, this COULD be referring to high and low current (though I'd prefer to say 'power') installations --- for example, the circuits in buildings often referred to as 'lighting' (= low power) and 'power' (= high power)

HOWEVER, and it's a big one!

In the list as given, and in the logic of your overall context, I think it probably means something different, along that lines that John was suggesting, though I can't agree with his way of expressing it.

Often, in these kind of circumstances, what they are talking about in terms of 'courants forts' is conventional electrical power, whilst by 'cournats faibles' they really mean the (incredibly ultra-low power) signal circuits used for things like phone systems, computer networks, etc.

Because the French use of 'courant' is VERY ambiguous here, you need to tread very carefully; this is why in English I would prefer the use of 'power' rather than 'current'

Look in the rest of your context to see if it is made clearer later, but my money would be on this interpretation, given the other items on your list.

You might also like to check the gloss., 'cos this has certainly come up before...

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2 days20 hrs (2006-03-13 09:29:28 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

One of the things that complicates the matter is that this term is used in 2 disitnct ways in FR, which really demand separate treatment in EN.

If you are an electrical distribution company, you tend to distinguish between high voltage / low voltage, referring to the (extremely!) high voltages (several kV) used for electricity distribution; to them, 'low voltage' [BT in FR] simply means 'the ordinary 220 V (etc.) mains supply'

HOWEVER, coming back down to the earth inhabited by us mere mortals, an electrical installer would talk about 'high voltage' meaning 'main supply voltage', and by 'low voltage' would mean things like 24 V emergency lighting supplies, supplies to tungsten-halogen lighting, and of course the whole range of 'signal' cables --- phones, video, networks etc. etc.

Now I mention this question of 'voltage', because we have already established that FR tend to refer to 'current' where we might more readily use 'voltage' or 'power' (it comes to roughly the same thing in the latters situation, but in the former, power distribution context, HV implies lower current and vice-versa, in order to minimize losses --- but that's a whole other issue, not relevant here...)

Now that site quote by F2E actually falls into this same trap --- at one and the same time, it is making the distinction between high voltage / low voltage installations (they talk about substaions, and the sort of major high voltage, high power stuff used at the power inputs to big buildings), and then in the next breath, they carry on talking about the difference between mains power supplies (lighting, power...) and signal circuits (video surveillance, phones, ...)

Really and trul, there are 3 thing here:

One contractor may take care of the really hefty, dangerous, specialist stuff where the power enters the building at high voltage and is transformed down in a substation to the more 'normal' mains voltage
A second contractor may well look after the installation of all 'mains' electrical circuits, including the relatively low power lighting and the higher current 'power' circuits (motors, plant, lifts, heating, etc.)
And yet a third contractor will handle all the non-dangerous low voltage/power/current 'signals' stuff like phones etc.

All I can say is that fewer projects (except the largest) have the first one, so your choice of perming 'any 2 from 3' is narrowed down slightly by that question of probability.

Also note that it would be pretty unusual to have 2 contractors separately doing the installation of 'lighting' and 'power' circuits, unless it was something like a factory, generating station or other really hefty user.

But you DO very often have separate installers for 'dangerous' mains wiring and 'non dangerous' signals stuff, since each requires a special and different set of skills.