Something new every day...

[alexpgp]

A pair of terms popped up yesterday that puzzled me. Both had to do with testing process pipelines. For a while, they made a few swipes with picks and shovels at the back of my mind, but now they've shown up again and started a major mining operation, so it's time to hunker down and figure out what they really mean.

One is "испытание на плотность"; the other, "испынание на герметичность."

"Плотность" usually means "density," but when you fill a pipe with water under pressure and check to see if anything drips out, you're not testing for density. Such a test is a leak test, and indeed, "плотность" can be used in the sense of "tightness" (as in "leak tightness") or "the quality of being leakproof." So there's no problem there; leak testing is pretty common in the engineering business.

Except that about the only meaning for "герметичность" in this context is... "tightness" (as in "leak tightness") or "the quality of being leakproof."

See the problem? They both seem to be "leak tests."

And it's not a case of synonymous usage; the text is referring to two distinctly separate tests (two-thirds of a trio, the third being a material strength test).

After noodling around for about 20 minutes and looking at text that assumes the reader just intuitively knows what's what in the discussion, I ran across the following in a fire safety standard:

Проверку на прочность, плотность материала и герметичность соединений всасывающих головок ... проводят на гидравлическом испытательном стенде.

Suction nozzle strength, плотность of material, and герметичность of joints ... are tested on a hydraulic test stand. [my translation]

Aha!

It was as if someone had thrown a switch.

Apparently, an "испытание на плотность" for piping refers to a test to make sure the pipe hardware doesn't leak (i.e., the pipes have only two holes, one at each end). And consequently, an "испынание на герметичность" tests for leakage at the places where pipes connect to each other (i.e., at the joints).

I think I will call these "pipe leak test" and "joint leak test" (unless I find something better, which I really don't have time for right now).

Cheers...

Comments

[astroprisoner.livejournal.com]

After noodling around for about 20 minutes and looking at text that assumes the reader just intuitively knows what's what in the discussion...

This raises an interesting point, a difficulty in translation that most people don't often think about: How many headaches do you suffer simply because of poor technical writing? Or cases where the writer assumes his audience understands it, but doesn't clearly explain jargon or mis-uses terms?

It can't be easy to translate a document into something that makes sense if it doesn't make a lot of sense in the original language, either.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

This is a very interesting point, indeed. I was lucky, because I started translating in the era before computers, which meant that I cut my teeth on fully peer-reviewed, competently edited, and proofread scientific articles. Then again, that being the era before computers, I couldn't do the kind of research I do now.

Assuming that the reader understands stuff is a hard hazard to avoid, because readers can be so pestilentially dense, but poorly explained or misused terminology is quite common (almost to the extent that I'm finding that typically, the worst source to turn to regarding terminology questions is a subject-matter expert).

Cheers...

[egofood.livejournal.com]

"integrity testing"

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

That was actually the first thing that popped into my head, but "leak testing" fits the bill equally well (I've seen it enough in the literature) and there turn out to be some awfully dense tables in the document where "leak" fits loads better than "integrity". :^)

Thanks for the suggestion.

Cheers...

[apollo14.livejournal.com]

How about seal(ing) test? What if плотность comes from уплотнение? I bet, it does.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Прiвит!

I'm sure the linguistic roots are the same, but if either activity had to be described as a "seal test," it'd be the "испынание на герметичность."

As I mention in the post, the sentence in the fire safety standard hit the nail on the head for me and explained a lot of what I had read earlier.

For example, several sources indicated that you test for плотность first and then герметичность. This sequence makes sense, in retrospect, only if you first make sure your hardware has no unintended holes before you check to see if the hardware leaks through cracks at places where it comes together.

Thanks for the comment.

Cheers...