English translation: feasibility studies, authorizations
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French to English translations [PRO] Tech/Engineering - Energy / Power Generation
French term or phrase:études de faisabilité débilités
This is from a project update on a new electricity grid that is being installed in a town in West Africa. I think the "débilités" must be a typo but I can't think what the person was trying to type. Of course, it is equally possible that this is not a typo, but a phrase I have not yet come across.
Here is the full sentence: "Proposition de faisabilité achevée. XXX prend maintenant des dispositions pour la phase d’aménagement qui comprennent des études de faisabilité débilités, l’établissement d’une société, une évaluation sociale et environnementale, et la conception technique."
surely this is just careless drafting, and what the writer intended was 'detailed' feasibility studies. You would want your study to be detailed rather than slapdash, I imagine.
Yep, I agree that it's probably unlikely, also given the tone. If you're pretty sure that "débiles" would be a better way to say that (as makes sense based on your noun/adjective point), then I'd be pretty willing to discount my suggestion :)
I'd have thought that was highly unlikely, given the apparently formal tone of the document, and also, surely they would have used the adjective 'débiles' rather than the noun 'débilité'?
I wonder if it could be correct, and the person writing it was expressing some frustration at having to go through some feasibility study that they thought should not be necessary. "A retarded/silly feasibility study", or more nicely, "an unnecessary feasibility study".
Wouldn't be the nicest way to put things, but that would be an explanation that didn't involve them having made a typo.
Do you know anything about the provenance of this text? Rather than a typo (which would have to be a fairly complex one, I'd have thought!), I'm wondering if this text may have been scanned and OCR'ed, in which case defective character recognition could explain a lot!
Note that if the original was mixed up enough, a spell checker could have suggested 'débilités' — I just tried the experiment under Word!
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Answers
37 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
feasibility studies, authorizations
Explanation: typo: de habilités - fitness to contract.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 43 minutes (2011-11-17 15:02:32 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Maybe it is no typo and means weaknessess?
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 49 minutes (2011-11-17 15:09:01 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
If it qualifies études then it should be débilitéEs
kashew France Local time: 09:52 Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 28
Grading comment
I went for this in the end and haven't received any complaints! Thank you :)
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +1