dérive (here)

English translation: ...and may) veer off course / take a different turn

21:32 Jan 9, 2019
French to English translations [PRO]
Medical - Economics / public health/health econonomics
French term or phrase: dérive (here)
This is from a discussion about knowing whether open science means better science. The sentence is as follows: Chaque pratique émergente porte en soi des enjeux économiques avec des dérives potentielles. "Enjeux et dérives" seems to be a common turn of phrase when talking about the social challenges of technological progress, but I don't quite understand what the "dérive" part means.
Joan Berglund
United States
Local time: 16:11
English translation:...and may) veer off course / take a different turn
Explanation:
Perfectly defined by Bijan. These might work here.
I.e the intrinsic economic implications may have this effect.
Selected response from:

ormiston
Local time: 21:11
Grading comment
Selected automatically based on peer agreement.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



Summary of answers provided
3 +7...and may) veer off course / take a different turn
ormiston
4 +1unintended consequences
Francois Boye
4 +1diversions/detours/deviations
Johannes Gleim
2 +3potential pitfalls
Philippe Etienne
4(potential) slippage
polyglot45
3aberrant developments [or] blind alley
Mpoma


Discussion entries: 26





  

Answers


45 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 3/5Answerer confidence 3/5 peer agreement (net): +7
...and may) veer off course / take a different turn


Explanation:
Perfectly defined by Bijan. These might work here.
I.e the intrinsic economic implications may have this effect.

ormiston
Local time: 21:11
Native speaker of: English
PRO pts in category: 8
Grading comment
Selected automatically based on peer agreement.

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Barbara Cochran, MFA
36 mins

agree  Eliza Hall: In the original sentence, it needs slightly different syntax: with the potential for [or risk of] veering off course.
37 mins

agree  Tony M: And with Eliza's comment...
1 hr

agree  Nikki Scott-Despaigne: The negative inference is sufficiently strong for it to be said: "veer off course" has that, as wld "to go off the rails". "Take a different turn" is more open and loses some of the negative connotation I think is needed in English.
12 hrs

agree  B D Finch
13 hrs

agree  Kim Metzger
14 hrs

agree  Yvonne Gallagher
1 day 14 hrs

neutral  Mpoma: Please see my answer. I think dérive is more forceful, implying a course which is just wrong, and must be abandoned.
3 days 18 hrs

neutral  SafeTex: The translation may be fine but I can't see such a long term being used each time "dérive" is mentioned.
3 days 19 hrs
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5 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
unintended consequences


Explanation:
In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton.[1]
Unintended consequences can be grouped into three types:
Unexpected benefit: A positive unexpected benefit (also referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).
Unexpected drawback: An unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis).
Perverse result: A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse). This is sometimes referred to as 'backfire'.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

Francois Boye
United States
Local time: 16:11
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in FrenchFrench
PRO pts in category: 37

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  Tony M: All you say is along the right lines, yet IMHO still misses the point slightly; certainly a 'dérive' might be said to be 'perverse' — but it often indicates some potentially deliberate course of action, rather than a fortuitous side-effect.
4 hrs

neutral  ormiston: it feels less like a repercussion than the PATH it takes (not always deliberate)
6 hrs

agree  Mpoma: As you are a native French speaker I'd like to know your opinion of my suggestion (below). Your answer seems close, but seems to me to lack any idea of "intentionality": doesn't a dérive imply some *deliberate*, flawed action by an agent?
3 days 14 hrs
  -> NO! dérive means drifting from the goal or objective
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11 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
diversions/detours/deviations


Explanation:
Chaque pratique émergente porte en soi des enjeux économiques avec des dérives potentielles. L’Open data pose évidemment des questions éthiques, sous l'angle des données personnelles.
=>
Each emerging practice has its own economic stakes/issues with potential diversions/detours/deviations. Open data obviously raises ethical questions, from the point of view of personal data.

Sounds negative on the first glance, but is this true? I don’t know. All depends on the further context.

A detour or (British English: diversion) is a (normally temporary) route taking traffic around an area of prohibited or reduced access, such as a construction site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detour

In statistics, the standard deviation (SD, also represented by the lower case Greek letter sigma σ or the Latin letter s) is a measure that is used to quantify the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of data values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

Do not forget to consider either:

Le professeur a demandé aux élèves de dériver cette fonction pour en connaître le sens de variation.
The professor asked the students to derive this function in order to find the direction of change.
http://www.wordreference.com/fren/dérives

The primary objects of study in differential calculus are the derivative of a function, related notions such as the differential, and their applications. The derivative of a function at a chosen input value describes the rate of change of the function near that input value.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_calculus

Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as -ness or un-. For example, happiness and unhappy derive from the root word happy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_derivation

La dérivation lexicale, ou encore dérivation, est un des procédés de formation des mots, au même titre que le néologisme ou l'emprunt. Elle s'inscrit au sein de la morphologie dérivationnelle (ou lexicale).
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérivation_lexicale


Johannes Gleim
Local time: 21:11
Native speaker of: German

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Chakib Roula: I would lean to "deviations".
38 mins
  -> Merci !

neutral  Tony M: Neither of your first 2 suggestions could really be used in the specific context here; like Chakib, I would only consider your 3rd term as a possible contender, though far from being my preferred solution here.
2 hrs
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14 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
(potential) slippage


Explanation:
could work to keep the sentence tight

all emerging practices go inherently hand-in-hand with economic challenges that have the potential to go astray

polyglot45
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish, Native in FrenchFrench
PRO pts in category: 15

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  Tony M: While I agree with 'go astray' (which indeed I suggested myself), I don't think 'slippage' would be at all correct here; it doesn't have the same negative connotations, and tends to refer to something that "just happens", rather than a course of action.
22 mins
  -> in projects, slippage is always bad news
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18 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 2/5Answerer confidence 2/5 peer agreement (net): +3
dérives potentielles
potential pitfalls


Explanation:
the potential pitfall of embracing a religion that turns out to be a sect (dérive sectaire), a political party that turns out to be against democracy (dérive totalitaire), but not the potential pitfall of setting foot on to a continent that turns ot to be moving (dérive des continents)


Philippe Etienne
Spain
Local time: 21:11
Native speaker of: Native in FrenchFrench

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Tony M: Although to some extent this sidesteps the actual term asked, I believe this would be an excellent translation solution in this specific context, hinting as it does at "things that might go wrong"
5 mins
  -> Thanks! I seem to read "challenges and pitfalls" every other day, so I thought they could ring well together. Don't bother with the source text, it's the target that matters!

agree  Mpoma: Tony puts it very well. I'm not sure that any usage of dérive can really be shoe-horned into "pitfall"... although it *seems* to fit well here. But does it? You are a native French speaker and I'd love to hear what you think of my idea (below).
3 days 1 hr
  -> Thanks. "dérive" in this context seems very clear to me (I like Tony's "dérapage", perhaps a tad stronger than "dérive"), but as a non-native speaker of English, I am not able to "feel" "blind alley" in its cultural whole...

agree  SafeTex: I like this anyway plus it is very concise.
3 days 1 hr
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3 days 20 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 3/5Answerer confidence 3/5
aberrant developments [or] blind alley


Explanation:
Really torn on this one... I think a couple of the answers here are very good, but somehow they all seem to lack something. I've always found dérive a difficult word.

I have found 4 definitions of the figurative use of dérive on the Net:

Wiktionnaire 4 https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/dérive
"Mauvaise direction, mauvaise pente."

Wiktionnaire 8
"Action, en particulier politique, qui diffère de celle annoncée par ceux qui la mènent."

What strikes me about the above 2 figurative definitions is how closely they stick to the original non-figurative definition, Wiktionnaire 1, "Écart, déviation entre le cap effectivement suivi par un navire ou un aéroplane et le cap initialement fixé."

elsewhere:
"déviation progressive et incontrôlée"
"fait de s'éloigner de la normalité"

François Boye's suggestion of "unintended consequences" is close, but not pejorative enough: these must be negative consequences if they are to be considered a dérive, IMHO. As Ormiston says in his comment, the word "consequences" does not convey the idea of a "path taken".

Concerning Wiktionnaire definition 4, taking the "wrong course" made me think of a "blind alley": all the signs are that your efforts to follow this path are worthwhile and will lead somewhere. In fact, no: the results are disappointing or non-existent, and that particular avenue/alley must thus be abandoned.

NB To the objection that a blind alley doesn't lead anywhere, I must respond: "it seems to, until you realise it doesn't... and that could take a very long time"!

Philippe Etienne's "potential pitfalls" seemed great at first sight... and he may well be right when he says "it's the target that matters". I would probably choose his translation to make my life simple ... but I think "pitfalls" is more vague and all-encompassing than dérive which, according to all the definitions I find, implies a dynamic process.

I find I can't choose between my two suggestions... and suggest that the French encompasses both meanings simultaneously!


Mpoma
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:11
Native speaker of: English
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