How much of the future should we project?

How much of the future should we project?

Swedish and English can differ when referring to the future explicitly. The following sentence is a good example of this:

"Vi diskuterade hur viktigt det är som forskare att kunna bidra till eventuella framtida behandlingar för svårt sjuka patienter."

"att kunna bidra till eventuella framtida behandlingar" is a lot of information. Some of it would likely not be expressed by a native English speaker when writing this type of text. For example, the uncertainty of "eventuella" and the future aspect would be handled differently.

Here's a proposed version in English:

“We discussed the importance of being able to contribute to developing treatments for seriously ill patients."

So I eliminated "eventuella" and "framtida". Why? "Developing" includes the concept of both the uncertainty and of not yet existing treatments.

"Framtida" is a subject worthy of discussion in itself. Swedish writers often add the term to indicate something does not yet exist when in fact this is often obvious by context. I suspect it is more the habit of phrase rather than a necessary element of the sentence. For this reason I often try to eliminate it if no meaning is lost.

I also changed the focus slightly by not emphasising the "forskare"/researcher. The reason is that from context (not shown here), the actor was abundantly evident and stating it again was redundant in my judgement.

The point: it is worth considering whether you really should include "framtida" in your translations or if you are simply doing so because the Swedish includes the word without considering the context.