Operation instead of Exploitation

 In French, exploitation has multiple meanings. One use is the negative abusive meaning that describes the action of treating someone or something (the environment) unfairly to benefit from them. The second describes the operation/utilization of a resource. In English, the modern mainstream use of exploitation is the latter.

 

The origins of the word are from the Latin explicō meaning unfold, deploy and the English borrowed it from the French exploiter, the derivative of exploit circa 1400. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it started having negative connotations around the mid-1800 “in part from the influence of French socialist writings (especially Saint Simon), also perhaps influenced by the use of the word in U.S. anti-slavery writing; and exploitation was hurled in insult at activities it once had crowned as praise.”

 It is common for French speakers/documents communicated to an English audience to use exploitation to describe an operation. This confuses English listeners, and likely results in them not following the discussion/topic.  If an audience member asks what exploitation means, many native French speakers are not able easily identify operation as an alternative word. This is because exploitation in French translates into exploitation in English. From exchanges with native French speakers, exploitation goes further than a simple operation. 

 The table below lists how different search engines translate exploitation from French to English (sorted alphabetically):

 

Google Translate	exploitation, operation, running, utilization, working
Bing Translate	exploitation, operation
Systran Translate	exploitation
DeepL Translator	exploitation, operation

 

Translating operation from English to French produces the following (sorted alphabetically):

Google Translate	deal, process, project, opération, transaction
Bing Translate	fonctionnement, opération
Systran Translate	opération
DeepL Translator	fonctionnement, opération

 From the output of the these engines, it is clear that there is no relation between exploitation and operation when looked at from the English side.

The purpose of presentations is to communicate information efficiently, so when producing content for consumption by an English audience it would be better to replace exploitation with operation, and/or utilization.