Madeleine Chevassus Dec 16, 2010:

Dans l'exemple de traduction au début, je remplacerais "érigés" par "mis en place" (érigé fait penser à un menhir)

Hilary Wilson Dec 16, 2010:

Tony's obs As indeed not in the temporal sense....
As = du fait que... (since or because)
Plusieurs solutions:
Les systemes de r et d'a tels ceux etudies... ont ete ..., ils peuvent donc/par consequent amasser
ou Du fait qu'ils aient ete....

kashew Dec 16, 2010:

A technical heading would be useful.

Tony M Dec 16, 2010:

I hesitate to suggest anything in FR... ...as I'm bound to get flamed, but I was think along the lines of:

au fur et à mesure de la mise en place de..., ces derniers risquent de connaître une accumulation...

Does that sound even vaguely like FR?

EA Traduction (asker) Dec 15, 2010:

Yes, or maybe "puisque" would be better.

EA Traduction (asker) Dec 15, 2010:

ok i see the difference. But to me, the problem is that in french, it sounds a bit strange to put "au fur et à mesure" together with "il se peut que". Au fur et à mesure que des systèmes de rétention et d’atténuation, comme ceux étudiés dans le projet ArtWet, sont mis en place pour retenir les pesticides agricoles, il se peut que ces composés soient accumulés dans les sols ou dans les plantes et potentiellement libérés par la suite.
To me, it sounds strange. Maybe ti would be better to put : Au fur et à mesure que ...ces composés peuvent être accumulés dans les sols ou dans les plantes...
What is your opinion?

Tony M Dec 15, 2010:

Some things can be more or less ruled out... I don't think 'as' here has any strictly temporal value, as in things happening at the same time: "As I walked (= while I was walking) down the road, I heard a bird singing"; so to me, that rather rules out the variants using things like 'alors que.. ' or 'tandis que...' (though I'm not the FR native speaker here, so I stand to be corrected!)

The idea of progressive simultaneity is still there with my suggestion of 'au fur et à mesure...' of course, but with a causal element to it that I think makes all the difference: "As I went further into the woods, I noticed the trees getting thicker and thicker" (here, you couldn't really replace 'as' with 'while', do you see the difference?)

Or else it is purely causal: "Because (= since) they are built especially to trap these things, they may experience a build up of these things" — a bit daft really...

EA Traduction (asker) Dec 15, 2010:

"puisque" me paraît totalement opposé à "alors que", du coup c'est le flou total...

EA Traduction (asker) Dec 15, 2010:

je me perts avec toutes ces propositions, "As" en début de phrase m'a toujours posé problèmes et je vois qu'il n'y a pas que moi qui hésite entre puisque, alors que, pendant que, au fur et à mesure que...
C'est difficile

Tony M Dec 15, 2010:

However... ... I've just thought of yet another possible interpretation!

The 'As' might be intended as 'since': 'Puisque...'

Consider this reading:

Since retention and mitigation systems ... are constructed in order to retain agricultural pesticides, they may be accumulating these compounds ...

I think this is probably the less likely interpretation however, since it would seem to be rather stating the obvious!

Tony M Dec 15, 2010:

Observation Quite apart from the question term, I have a feeling your translation of As... is not correctly interpreting the source text.

I don't believe the sense here is 'alors que', but rather 'au fur et à mesure que...' — e.g. the more that get constructed, the bigger the problem may become.

Similar problem with 'may', which I think has more the sens of 'il se peut que..' here