Comments on Is English translation of technical terms on-topic?
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Is English translation of technical terms on-topic?
Quite often, I find myself knowing the technical term of an electronic component in my native language, but not the proper English term. For example when translating a manual or other technical documentation to English, since these terms are far too technical to find in a dictionary.
In such situations I tend to do a literal translation, which can end up very strange and often comical "Engrish". (RL anecdote: all capacitors in our inventory system once ended up translated to "condensators", which would be a direct translation from Swedish "kondensator".)
Googling the translation can be hard and sometimes you end up with a "good enough" translation that can be understood in English, even though it isn't the correct term.
It would therefore be helpful to ask a native English EE what the correct English term is, so that I end up using the correct term.
Example question, this came up today:
What are these called in English?
(From https://sc04.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1pLUPguOSBuNjy0Fdq6zDnVXa9.jpg)
The translation I came up with is "cable canal" or alternatively "cable duct". No idea what is most correct.
Are these kind of questions on-topic? Or might people find them annoying since they are too simplistic?
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I think we should definitely allow technical terms translations, because it's really difficult to find reliable sources online. And the translation process can be tricky, since the translated term can be context sensitive. Some examples in Italian:
array antennas --> antenne a schiera ("schiera" here translates "array") and is a well-established term in telecom engineering (there is no alternative "antenne ad array" terminology).
but
array variable --> variabile di tipo array or simply array (no sane Italian programmer would call them "variabili a schiera").
But there are also problems with false friends and (almost) homophones/homographs. As an example:
silicon --> silicio
silicone --> silicone
You can't imagine how many American TV shows were dubbed in Italian with those two terms swapped. In particular I always laugh my pants off when I hear someone talking about "chip di silicone" ("silicone chips"). Strangely enough, I never heard someone making the opposite mistake and talking about some model having silicon breast implants. :-)
I think the first time I heard this was in a Star Trek episode where Mr.Spock talked about some "silicon-eating rock-burrowing creatures" and that was translated as "silicone-eating" in the dubbing.
Sometimes this happens even in more "serious" programs, like news reports, when not done by journalists with some scientific background. I vaguely remember some journalist talking not long ago about the need to asses the presence of useful minerals like silicone in mars rocks for future colonies to be able to build infrastructures with local materials.
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