Testa pozzo

Italian: testa pozzo

Wellhead. For drilling. Italian always lulls you into thinking you know what it's talking about, then strangely persists in being a different language from Spanish and French.

Band

German: Band

German words sometimes end up with a whole lot of English "equivalents". Today's is Band, which can mean, well, "band", but also "volume (of a book)" or, in my special case today, "door or gate hinge". No, really.

I got all the way through to the drawing explanations in a patent about gate hinges today before I thought, you know, translating this as "band" just isn't all that felicitous.

It's amazing I get any repeat business at all. Fortunately I usually twig to this stuff before delivering.

Recherche

French: recherche

You'd think it would be research - and normally you'd be right! But in mining, it's prospecting. Fortunately, this shoe dropped before I returned the translation.

a.i.

French (Congolese): a.i.

Latin ad interim, that is "Acting" or "Interim", applied to a title. In this case, a contract for a Congolese mining company with Administrateur Directeur Général a.i. - Acting General Managing Director. This might be Belgian French, but it's certainly in use in the Congo.

Verschmächtigt

German: verschmächtigt

Atrophied. The folks at LEO are full of scorn for such unprofessional slang and cast aspersions at Austrian German and all the doctors who use it in their records, but my instance is from Munich.

Betreffniss

Swiss German: Betreffniss

Oy. Banking in Swiss. "Allotment" or "share". Some of the alternative dictionaries (dict.cc for this one) do a better job with Schwyzerdütsch than my old standby LEO.

Kommutierungseinbruch

German: Kommutierungseinbruch

Commutation notch.

The DKE has a lovely, lovely online dictionary for IEV electrical terminology. These are the things that make German translation so much easier than it used to be.

Blindstrom

German: Blindstrom

Reactive current. But I want to type "dummy current" every time, even though it doesn't mean anything.

Dahlanderschaltung

German: Dahlanderschaltung

In an AC motor, a "Dahlander circuit" can be used to alter the number of poles in the drive circuit in order to double its speed. It's apparently used in HVAC systems, which is where I've encountered it. [wikipedia.de]

The full translation is probably best rendered as "Dahlander pole-changing circuit" (e.g. here), but in different circumstances I could see either "Dahlander pole changing" or "Dahlander circuit".

Legitimiert

German: legitimiert

Authorized.

It's unusual to see a Latin faux ami in German...

DM

Spanish medical abbreviation: DM

My guess (this is a case history for a cardiac patient): Diabetes mellitus. Meaning it's the same in English, of course. Sheesh.

Dolor

Spanish: dolor

Pain, of course. Like the pain of trying to Google a phrase in Spanish about pain - and getting back every freaking lorem ipsum page on the planet.

(The answer, of course, is a search string of the form: "DM dolor -lorem -amet". I still don't know what "DM" abbreviates, though. It's a mystery.)