German: ÜWM
ÜWM is an abbreviation for Überwurfmutter - or union connection, the cap-shaped nut on the end of flexible plumbing hoses (at least in the States, the hose to your toilet tank has one, for example).
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
CTU
Italian: CTU
This was a weird one, in a court brief. Turns out it stands for consulente tecnico d'ufficio, which is expert witness.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Tökön szúrom magam
Hungarian: tökön szúrom magam
Oh, Hungary. Your earthy terminology is so evocative. In English, this is I'll stab myself in the groin. Not something one normally expects to see in an employee survey, but hey.
Oh, Hungary. Your earthy terminology is so evocative. In English, this is I'll stab myself in the groin. Not something one normally expects to see in an employee survey, but hey.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Terméskötődés or just kötődés
Hungarian: (termés)kötődés
I do have the feeling I'm going to be posting more than just two agronomy terms during the course of this job, but this one was a doozy. It took me at least two hours to run it to ground. And it's another phenological term, this time for cherries (and other fruit). Kötődés without the context is just "binding", which was pretty useless - and worse, misleading, because for quite some time I thought it must mean a task carried out by the farmer, binding the buds or something. (OK, so, I'm not a cherry farmer, all right?)
Anyway, it turns out to be fruit set, which is the point where the ovaries of the blossoms start to swell to form fruit. This kind of thing is why I love translation. Who would have thought of either of these terms, let alone both of them at once?
I do have the feeling I'm going to be posting more than just two agronomy terms during the course of this job, but this one was a doozy. It took me at least two hours to run it to ground. And it's another phenological term, this time for cherries (and other fruit). Kötődés without the context is just "binding", which was pretty useless - and worse, misleading, because for quite some time I thought it must mean a task carried out by the farmer, binding the buds or something. (OK, so, I'm not a cherry farmer, all right?)
Anyway, it turns out to be fruit set, which is the point where the ovaries of the blossoms start to swell to form fruit. This kind of thing is why I love translation. Who would have thought of either of these terms, let alone both of them at once?
Sorzárodás
Hungarian: sorzárodás
Agronomy is always a terminology-intensive subject matter, and it didn't help that my source document had misspelled this as sozárodás, but I finally managed to narrow it down to a stage in the life of potato plants. Life stages of plants, by the way, are a matter of phenology. Just so you know
Anyway, this turns out to be surprisingly simple to translate: row closure. Amazing. Exactly what it says. It's the point when the leaves of the plants cover the ground between them. After row closure, if you apply a pesticide, it's not going to make it to the soil.
German: Reihenschluss. It's always so nice when words say what they mean.
Agronomy is always a terminology-intensive subject matter, and it didn't help that my source document had misspelled this as sozárodás, but I finally managed to narrow it down to a stage in the life of potato plants. Life stages of plants, by the way, are a matter of phenology. Just so you know
Anyway, this turns out to be surprisingly simple to translate: row closure. Amazing. Exactly what it says. It's the point when the leaves of the plants cover the ground between them. After row closure, if you apply a pesticide, it's not going to make it to the soil.
German: Reihenschluss. It's always so nice when words say what they mean.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Vorpromesse
German: Vorpromesse
Actually, I'm still not 100% sure how to translate this one, but it's something along the lines of a preliminary promissory note: documentation of a commitment on the part of a bank to make a certain loan contingent on the awarding of a contract.
Actually, I'm still not 100% sure how to translate this one, but it's something along the lines of a preliminary promissory note: documentation of a commitment on the part of a bank to make a certain loan contingent on the awarding of a contract.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Jogosult és kötelezett
Hungarian: jogosult and kötelezett
In Hungarian, legal relationships are very often boiled down to their minimum (from the anglophonic perspective) - so you very often see jogosult rendered as obligor and kötelezett as the obligee, that is, the parties who are granted a benefit and an obligation by a contract, respectively. And technically, these are correct, but of course, in the English world we don't ever actually use those terms.
Instead, we normally use more restrictive terms that are specific to the actual relationship being codified in the contract: so a jogosult ends up being the lender, and the kötelezett the borrower, for instance. But Hungarian uses these terms for lots of different kinds of contract, like employer/employee.
I love this kind of detail. I got this nice summary from this cool blog here on HU/EN legal translation.
In Hungarian, legal relationships are very often boiled down to their minimum (from the anglophonic perspective) - so you very often see jogosult rendered as obligor and kötelezett as the obligee, that is, the parties who are granted a benefit and an obligation by a contract, respectively. And technically, these are correct, but of course, in the English world we don't ever actually use those terms.
Instead, we normally use more restrictive terms that are specific to the actual relationship being codified in the contract: so a jogosult ends up being the lender, and the kötelezett the borrower, for instance. But Hungarian uses these terms for lots of different kinds of contract, like employer/employee.
I love this kind of detail. I got this nice summary from this cool blog here on HU/EN legal translation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)