levées

18:43 May 2, 2018 

Pourquoi s'embellir ou voir même s'emballer quand on peut faire simple?

It's pretty straightforward yet a few responses seem to have added complexity, and additional meaning which is not there. While the document may refer to start-ups nothing in that text says so. The key clause is "l’investissement dans le secteur numérique a connu une nette embellie en France en 2017 avec 1,5 milliards € de levées. The subclause that follows merely adds a little colour to how that number is derived, ie 460 capital raises (for 1,5 bio) at an average raise of 3.5 mio). The term for fund raising and/or a raising of funds, in French is, une levée de fonds, ou levées des fonds.

To equivalent expression in English (therefore not a literal translation is) would be: Investment in the digital sector (possibly market) in France has seen a marked in increase with 1.5 billion in funds raised (or in raised capital, or capital invested).

18:30 Apr 28, 2018 

Thanks Phil - they do go on to talk extensively about startups, so what you suggest makes a lot of sense in the context. I do agree though that, as njweatherdon says, we can't be 100% sure that all the 460 are examples of startup investments. I think that's what makes this translation so tricky - the need to be accurate but not misleading given that it's a statistic...

18:24 Apr 28, 2018 

"Startup investment" sounds like a good term, but probably it does not apply to some number of cases among the 460 mentioned. For example it could be additional investments to provide additional capital to something that's already operating beyond a startup stage (e.g., a product with positive margins in the market), or perhaps in some cases even buying up competition.

If such situations apply for some of the 460 cases, then "startup investment" (or similar) could be misleading, regardless of whether the data was originally intended to address precisely such "startup investment", per se.

18:17 Apr 28, 2018 

The key question is what they mean by "investissement", and if you Google this word together with "levées", all the hits relate to funds raised for startups. I'm sure there's a simple one-word translation, but I can't think of it. Or you could just say startup investment.

18:03 Apr 28, 2018 

Thanks, I agree, that's what I thought, but that's also what confused me - I wasn't sure what to use as a clear-cut solution in English. Glad it's not just me!

17:58 Apr 28, 2018 

It seems to refer to an instance of funds provided to an enterprise, as an investment, in the digital sector.

460 funds raised. 460 investments. But the question of whether 2 companies separately investing in some project would count as two instances. Also, whether a single project raising capital twice would count as 2 instances. Uncertainty about that could affect selection of the correct term.