Saturday, April 27, 2013

We

Hungarian: We (blood test)

Sometimes the abbreviations don't make sense.  Given Hungarian blood tests results, I had "We" - measured in mm/h.  So ... obviously the sed rate, right?  You'd think.  But what does "We" stand for?  The actual translation of sedimentation rate for blood is vörösvértest süllyedés.  No "W" at all - and in fact, "W" is not a letter normally used in Hungarian in the first place.

So as it turns out, We is the abbreviation used for sed rate, as confirmed by this helpful page of lab test abbreviations in Hungarian, but I still don't know its etymology.

Monday, April 22, 2013

LS-Schalter

German: LS-Schalter

Short for Leistungsschutzschalter, "power protection switch" or, in actual English, circuit breaker.  Which I know, and yet it's always so easy for the brain to bail and give you "LS switch" as a translation.  Stupid brain!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

éhomi

Hungarian: éhomi

As in éhomi vércukor; my wife and I have been collaborating on some medical translations lately.  The state of Hungarian online dictionaries is not so fantastic as I'm used to with German.  SZTAKI (the university) has a really good resource, but if a word isn't in there, you're on your own, and SZTAKI's dictionary is largely business- and technology-related.  Medical, not so much.

Turns out it's fasting, as in fasting blood sugar.  Duh.  Obvious after the fact.