Source: Libération Online
In the article entitled Ces déchets suisses qui refont surface, I came across the expression “en douce”.
Dans les années 50, l’industrie chimique aurait enterré ses résidus en douce.
According to WordReference, this expression means:
On the sly, on the quiet, furtively
We could translate the entire sentence as:
In the 50s, the chemical industry was allegedly burying its waste on the sly.
The trickiest part of this translation is that of the word “aurait”. Whilst the conditional is used in French, we cannot translate this to “would have” in English. In fact, in this case, “aurait” is more a suggestion or accusation than a something that is definite.