Glossary entry (derived from question below)
French term or phrase:
se glisser dans les pas de
English translation:
indulge in
French term
United States
se glisser dans les pas
La tentative est grande aussi de se glisser dans les pas de la science-fiction. The subject "tentative" refers to thinking about laboratory medicine in 2025.
Sep 16, 2013 18:47: David Hayes changed "Level" from "PRO" to "Non-PRO"
Mar 28, 2014 15:53: philgoddard Created KOG entry
PRO (3): philgoddard, Emma Paulay, Yolanda Broad
Non-PRO (3): AllegroTrans, Claire Nolan, David Hayes
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Proposed translations
United States
Six languages into flawless English
Native in: English
Works in: German to English, French to English, Spanish to English, and 4 more.
indulge in
Even though "tentative" means "attempt", "la tentative est grande" almost certainly means "there is a big temptation", as you'll see if you click on my reference. I don't know whether this just a very common mistake - it gets lots of Google hits - or whether it's proper French.
I think "se glisser dans" means "slip into" as in "slip into the error of", and the idea is that we should avoid making wild, science-fiction-style guesses about what the profession is going to be like in 2025.
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Note added at 2 hrs (2013-09-16 21:01:48 GMT)
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Sorry, yet again ProZ has curtailed my link. But try Googling "la tentative est grande", and you'll see what I mean.
| neutral |
Wolf Draeger
: It's a compelling explanation, though there's an equal chance the writer is actually encouraging sci-fi speculation. After all, sci-fi has turned out to be future fact on more than one occasion. I'm honestly not sure anymore on this one.
1 hr
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| neutral |
Daryo
: agree totally on "there is a big temptation", but I wouldn't use "indulge" here
10 hrs
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United Kingdom
Sensible solutions
Native in: English (Variant: Wessexois) 
Works in: French to English, English, English to French
follow in the footsteps/tread the path
Not a PRO term
take a page/leaf out of
There are also many attempts to take a page out of science fiction.
The temptation is also great to take a leaf out of science fiction.
| agree |
AllegroTrans
4 mins
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Thanks Allegro.
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| neutral |
philgoddard
: Try Googling "take a leaf/page out of". It's always followed by "book".
49 mins
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I'm sure the metaphor can be stretched without too much damage :)
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| neutral |
Emma Paulay
: I agree with Phil.
11 hrs
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examine it from a science-fiction perspective
experience "real" science-fiction (it'd be a big stride/stretch to do so)
In other words, it's a big stride to really experience science fiction in real life. That's how I read it anyways.
se glisser dans les pas = experience in the steps of = to live it (more natural=sounding English)
tentative = stride/stretch
Real Science Fiction:
http://whatweekly.com/2012/08/02/real-science-fiction/
I hope this helps.
(it's very tempting) to slip into (a science fiction mode)
Discussion
The ST is not about "une tentative" (trying to / attempting ...) - simply doesn't agree with this sentence structure - but "la tentation" (being tempted to ...).
It's more likely that only one word is wrongly used, rather than a whole sentence structure.
What is meant is:
There's also a big temptation to follow science-fiction in its footsteps ... or simply
"We could also be greatly tempted to follow science fiction in its footsteps (and ...?)"
very similar to what AllegroTrans proposed.
But there are many google hits for ''la tentative est grande de....'' (not as many as for ''la tentation est grande de''). I wonder if it's a common error?