Fire protection

The twenty-second entry is la surveillance incendie, and the noun in front is a loan that English narrowed after borrowing it. In English « surveillance » belongs to police work and intelligence: cameras, a van parked in the street, a warrant. It is done to somebody suspected of something, and nobody uses it of their own ordinary job. French uses it for watching of every kind, most of it dull and benign. Un surveillant is the member of school staff who keeps order in the corridors; la surveillance des examens is invigilation; être sous surveillance médicale is being kept an eye on by a doctor; la surveillance du chantier is site supervision. The entry here is the watch kept on a building after hot work has stopped, one person walking rounds for a set number of hours. Two things follow. Reading la surveillance as covert watching turns a caretaker into an informer. And in the other direction, English « surveillance » should not become la surveillance on its own: it wants a word saying who is watching whom, as in la surveillance policière or la mise sous surveillance, or the sentence loses exactly what made it sinister.