Surveying

La compensation par moindres carrés is the calculation that spreads the leftover discrepancies of a survey network across all of its measurements, and the first noun is a false friend that can cost a reader the whole sentence. In English, « compensation » is money: what is paid to somebody who was injured, dismissed or wronged, and at work it has stretched further to mean pay in general. French keeps the older and purely arithmetical idea — two things set against each other until they balance out. La compensation in law is set-off, one debt cancelled against another; la chambre de compensation is a clearing house, where mutual claims are netted and very little money actually moves; and en compensation at the end of a sentence means to make up for it. So a surveyor’s compensation distributes error instead of paying for it, and the English term is « adjustment ». When French does mean money for harm it changes word altogether, to l’indemnisation, le dédommagement or les dommages-intérêts.