# EN: les données ont été modifiées



## Ti Bateau

It is not often easy to determine whether the French 'a été + past participle' is a past passive tense:
e.g. a été construit - was built

or a present perfect tense
e.g. a été construit - has been built

I am reading an article that includes a table of data; I would interpret the phrase:
'les données sur le tableau ont étés modifiées pour certaines espèces'

as 'the data on the table has been modified for certain species' versus 'the data on the table was modified for certain species'

I will be interested to learn other opinions.


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## Transfer_02

You have to decide how recent that modification is, in relation to the author's position at the time of writing and whether that modification has any relevance to the present time (ie the author's present at the time of writing).  


(PS:  I would say "the data IN the table")


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## Ti Bateau

Thank you for your reply Transfer_02, & I agree that it should be 'in the table'.
However, I disagree with your answer to my main question, as Present Perfect and Past Passive can both refer to the same period of time, but they imply different things:

Present Perfect describes a past action in relation to the present time: 'I have been to Venice many times since 1999.' (since 1999 to the present time)
Past Passive describes a past action when the object of a sentence becomes the subject: 'He built the house in 1999.' = 'The house was built in 1999.'

I look forward to hearing other interpretations/translations for 'a été + past participle' in the above context and otherwise.


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## Oddmania

Hi,

I'm not an English speaker, but I think I've got to agree with Transfer_02 on this. You can put the same sentence differently in English, depending on how relevant or recent the action is: _I've lost my job_ (and it's terrible) *VS*_ I lost my job_ (but I moved on), or_ I've been told _*VS *_I was told._

That nuance doesn't exist in French, so you've got to make it up if you're translating  French into English. I don't think it's that important, though. _Data was modified _and _Data has been modified_ pretty much amounts to the same thing.


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## Ti Bateau

Thank you Oddmania, I am an English teacher hence know the intricacies of the language and the subtle nuances to some are not so subtle in certain contexts.
However, your explanation is generally applicable in English.

Regarding a French sentence, how would I therefore interpret:
  'Elle a été actualisée par les données qui date de 2001.'
'It has been updated by data dating from 2001.' (which means that it has continuously been updated over the past years since 2001)
OR 
'It was updated by data from/in 2001.' (which means it was last updated in 2001).

'qui date de' leads me to believe it is the first answer, i.e. the present perfect?


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## ShineLikeStars

I definitely struggle with this as well, BTB. I am often confused as to when to use was or has been (in French, not in English). While I agree that has been might seem a little more recent than was, I think a lot of it would depend on the context.

There does seem to be something more permanent about was and something more continuous with the has been tense. 

Also, isn't data a plural word in English?


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## Ti Bateau

Thank you for your comment ShineLikeStars, & to answer your question: 'data' is an uncountable noun so is conjugated in the third person singular.

Do you have any thoughts on my question re:
'Elle a été actualisée par les données qui date de 2001.'?


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## ShineLikeStars

BTB said:


> Do you have any thoughts on my question re: 'Elle a été actualisée par les données qui date de 2001.'?



Hmmm. In this case, I might not literally translate _qui date de 2001_ and interpret the sentence as _It has been updated by data from 2001_, which to me might suggest that "it" has been recently updated by data from 2001. If we interpreted the sentence as _It was updated by data from 2001_, I would think that it was updated by 2001 data, but maybe a few years back and not very recently. 



BTB said:


> Thank you for your comment ShineLikeStars, & to  answer your question: 'data' is an uncountable noun so is conjugated in  the third person singular.



Interesting! And all this time I've been writing things like "the data are", "the data were". I always understood the singular form to be datum. Maybe WR should change their definition of the plural form of data here


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## jann

BTB said:


> Regarding a French sentence, how would I therefore interpret:
> 'Elle a été actualisée par les données qui date de 2001.'


Since _données_ is plural, this French sentence is incorrect.  Did you mean to type _"...les données qui date*nt *de 2001"_ or was the error present in the original?   If the error was there, we are left to wonder whether the author of the sentence was careless or non-native, or whether the sentence got incompletely rearranged during editing and was not supposed to read this way!  If the verb had been correctly conjugated in the plural, the meaning of this sentence would be unambiguous:

_Elle a été actualisée par les données qui date*nt* de 2001_ 
= It (presumably a database) was (or: has been) updated by the addition of the information that dates to the year 2001.  

In other words, information dated 2001 (collected or made available in 2001?) that had previously been omitted is now included in the dataset.  The sentence provides no further information.  We cannot know whether 2001 was simpy a missing year in a long series or conversely the most recent data available.  We cannot know whether or not the database is continuously updated, when addition of the 2001 data occurred, when the most recent update took place, etc.

One more thing is clear: the French sentence cannot be interpreted as "The database has been being updated regularly/continuously since 2001."  That idea would require the word _depuis_ and use of the present tense in French.

Does this help? 

As regards the singular or plural status of English _data_, anyone interested in discussing that question should please do so in EN: data - singulier / pluriel.  We don't need to repeat ourselves on that topic here!


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## Ti Bateau

Thank you ShineLikeStars. 
I am now questioning 'qui date de' in another post, as I am sure it means 'dates from' meaning 'from one date to another over a period of time' versus from one specific date (year, month, day) only?


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## Ti Bateau

Sorry Jann, I did not see your very helpful post.
Sadly, the error ('données qui date') was the author's, but your explanation is very clear and has helped my understanding of this phrase.
However, the question regarding 'has been'/'was' is still unanswered?


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## Transfer_02

ShineLikeStars said:


> Hmmm. In this case, I might not literally translate _qui date de 2001_ and interpret the sentence as _It has been updated by data from 2001_, which to me might suggest that "it" has been recently updated by data from 2001. If we interpreted the sentence as _It was updated by data from 2001_, I would think that it was updated by 2001 data, but maybe a few years back and not very recently.



Yes, this is the distinction which I was trying to explain higher up in this thread.  You have to put yourself into the head of the author and try to decide what he was intending at the time he wrote the text.  Was he implying that the data was updated at some point in the past or was he implying that the date has been updated more recently (ie, there is some connection with the author's "present" at the time of writing)?

By the way:   Elle a été actualisée par les données qui *datent* de 2001.

Grammatically I would say this is a passive construction because the table was updated BY the data (the data updated the table).  But whether it is present perfect passive or past passive can only be determined by deciding what the author intended at the time of writing.  Which is tricky.


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## Ti Bateau

Thank you for your input. 
It is indeed difficult to know when the data was updated, and this knowledge would resolve the has been/was query.


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## jann

BTB said:


> However, the question regarding 'has been'/'was' is still unanswered?


Let me take a step back.

In English, we have these two tenses -- preterit ("was") and present perfect ("has been") -- and the choice between them usually conveys some information at a very basic/fundamental leval about the temporal context and your point of view, as a speaker, on when various things took place.  When I say "point of view," I refer to how you perceive or wish to convey the passage of time or the temporal connection/disconnect between your words and the event you mention.  So our English grammar shapes how we think and talk about time and especially past events.

French doesn't have these two tenses.  Consequently, there is a fundamentally different way of thinking about past events.  This "was" vs. "has been" idea that can be so very important in English is often simply absent in French.  (And as you surely know, French has a different tense choice -- between the passé composé and the imparfait -- that we English-speakers have trouble mastering because it reflects a different way of thinking about time that we often don't bother with in English, at least not explicitly.) 

As a result, it there is no single or straightforward answer to your question about how to translate _ont été_, as "was" or "has been."  The French author did not "intend" one or the other, because s/he doesn't have a way to distinguish between the two.  Of course we English speakers do distinguish and so you, translating, must choose.  Fortunately, you are a native English speaker, so you can do this.  Consider the entire context (a full paragraph, an academic paper that describes the updating of the database, someone telling you that how she has revised her estimates of XYZ due to the discovery and inclusion of this 2001 data, etc.).  And then ask yourself if, given everything you know about the situation -- the story the author is telling, what she has said so far and what comes next, the point or focus, etc. -- whether you would use the preterit or the present perfect to make a statement about the updating of the database if you were telling the story yourself.


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## Maître Capello

_Les données du tableau *ont été modifiées* pour certaines espèces._ → The data in the table *was/has been modified* for certain species.
The  original sentence may be translated using either the simple past or the  present perfect depending on the exact nuance the author wants to  convey.

_Elle *a été actualisée* avec des données qui datent de 2001._ → It *was updated* by data dating from 2001.
Here,  I would prefer the simple past, even more so because the data is  possibly obsolete today. The present perfect would however make sense if  the data has just been updated and very old information was used up to  now. So, once again, it is a matter of perspective.



BTB said:


> It  is indeed difficult to know when the data was updated, and this  knowledge would resolve the has been/was query.


I disagree.  That knowledge would not resolve anything. As time is subjective, the  choice of the tense doesn't depend on the exact time the data was  actually updated. That choice here solely depends on the author's  intention. In other words, when translating those French sentences, you,  as translator, must decide which tense you prefer.


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## jann

Maître Capello said:


> _Elle *a été actualisée* avec des données qui datent de 2001._ → It *was updated* by with data dating from 2001.
> ("By" would indicate that the data performed the update!)


Certainly, the simple past is the only possibility is certain situations...  For example, if you are describing the history of the development of a dataset, which was created in 1998 and updated in 2002 using the most recent data available at the time -- which was data from 2001 -- and then further updated/used/discontinued/whatever over the last 12 years.


> The present perfect would however make sense if  the data has just been updated and very old information (from 2001) was used up to  now. added to an existing dataset from which it had previously been excluded. (The dataset does not need to be old; it could indeed be recent, and adding 2001 extends it back in time to give a longer period of record!)


And as we can see here, the present perfect is quite natural in other situations.  We could, for example, imagine an article that reanalyzes an existing archeological theory to form a revised hypothesis about an ancient society, with updated versions of graphics/etc. showing how results from various studies conducted over the past decade fit with or contradict previous theories.

The point is that the choice in English depends on the larger context!



> _Les données du tableau *ont été modifiées* pour certaines espèces._ → The data in the table *was/has been modified* for certain species.


 Not to get off-topic, but if these are chemical  species, then this is definitely a technical article... and in the  scientific literature (as opposed to everyday usage), the plural is  definitely preferred for "data."


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## Ti Bateau

These are very comprehensive answers and very useful - thank you all for your time and effort.


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## radagasty

jann said:


> French doesn't have these two tenses.  Consequently, there is a fundamentally different way of thinking about past events.  This "was" vs. "has been" idea that can be so very important in English is often simply absent in French. ... The French author did not "intend" one or the other, because s/he doesn't have a way to distinguish between the two.


I wonder whether it is possible to cast this in terms of the distinction between the _passé composé _and the _passé simple _in literary French. In other words, if we ask ourselves whether the French author would have written _les données furent modifiées _or _ont été modifiées _had he been writing in a literary style, could we decide on that basis whether to translate into the English past or perfect?


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## Maître Capello

jann said:


> _Elle *a été actualisée* avec des données qui datent de 2001._ → It *was updated* by with data dating from 2001.
> ("By" would indicate that the data performed the update!)



 Thanks! I was wondering whether or not to change that in English as well because it is indeed exactly the same in French. (_Par_ doesn't work because the data didn't perform the update!)



radagasty said:


> I wonder whether it is possible to cast this in terms of the distinction between the _passé composé _and the _passé simple _in literary French. In other words, if we ask ourselves whether the French author would have written _les données furent modifiées _or _ont été modifiées _had he been writing in a literary style, could we decide on that basis whether to translate into the English past or perfect?


Unfortunately, you cannot compare the English simple-past-vs-present-perfect dilemma with the French passé-simple-vs-passé-composé one. There are similarities, yes. For example, I guess it is safe to say that the passé simple should always be translated as a simple past. On the other hand, you cannot say that the passé composé should always be translated as a present perfect. There are indeed cases where only the passé composé makes sense in French (i.e., you could not replace it with the passé simple in literary writing) but you would still use the simple past in English. Likewise, you sometimes use the present perfect but we use a present instead. As mentioned by Jann earlier, the tense structure of each language is just different and there is no direct equivalent in the other language.


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## tatar

bonjour, pour moi, il n'y a aucune ambiguïté sur le sens en français :
"elle a été actualisée avec les données qui datent de 2001 " siginfie simplement "les données disponibles en l'année 2001 ont été rajoutées à la base". Ces données peuvent tout à fait se réferrer à des années antérieures à 2001, mais en aucun cas à des données postérieures.
Si la mise à jour concernait uniquement et strictement l'année 2001, on aurait plutôt dit "elle a été actualisée avec les données de l'année 2001".


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## Transfer_02

I think we all agree on that.
The ambiguity we are discussing here concerns the English translation and, in particular, how the verb should be treated in English.  But that dilemma can only be resolved by reading the whole text in order to determine the author's implicit intended meaning which is not evident in the phrase as it stands alone in French.


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## Ti Bateau

Thank you for yet another useful comment tatar.


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## Maître Capello

tatar said:


> "elle a été actualisée avec les données qui datent de 2001 " siginfie simplement "les données disponibles en l'année 2001 ont été rajoutées à la base". Ces données peuvent tout à fait se réferrer à des années antérieures à 2001


Je ne suis pas d'accord. Pour moi, des données qui datent de 2001 sont des données qui ont été récoltées/obtenues en 2001.


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## tatar

Le disque dur de mon ordinateur tombe en panne ; je le change et je charge les données _qui datent du 04/12/2012_ - qui est en fait la date de ma dernière sauvegarde. J'ai évidemment perdu les données postérieures mais j'ai récupéré toutes les données antérieures à cette date.
Ce qui est fondamentalement différent de : je charge les données du 04/12/2012.


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## Maître Capello

Sauf qu'ici il ne s'agit pas des données d'un disque dur…  Et même dans ce cas-là, il s'agit des données *remontant au* 4 avril 2012, ce qui n'est pas la même chose que les données *datant du* 4 avril 2012.


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