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Мне не спится, нет огня...
Mar. 11th, 2004 02:20 amSo start some verses composed at night by Pushkin, during a bout of insomnia. The first few lines (of the original and my translation) go:
* * * Yesterday was apparently "nitpick terminology" day at the office.
It started with a running verbal battle between two fairly experienced translators as to the proper translation, into English, of the term that means the amount of torque one applies to a nut that's been tightened down to start to untighten it.
Party A maintained the term was "breakaway torque"; Party B vituperatively maintained it was "breakloose torque."
Such fireworks! So loud and distracting! With excursions on the relative merits of linguistic knowledge and practical knowledge (i.e., "that's how engineers speak"). Both sides not only considered themselves to be utterly right, but lambasted the other for being utterly wrong. No quarter was asked for, and none was given.
Finally, I got up from my seat, edged past the combatants, and spent about 30 seconds with Google, then tapped the nearest contestant on the shoulder to get his attention. (Over the years, I've found that an infusion of facts is often successful in getting people to stop repeating themselves in fruitless argument. This allows bystanders to get back to work.)
To be frank, I'd never heard of "breakloose" torque, and thought "breakaway" torque was the correct term, but what appear to be knowledgeable sources on the Internet say the former is correct, if you're unscrewing a fastener like a nut. The latter applies to the amount of torque required to turn an untightened fastener, apparently.
A lesson in passing was an illustration of the danger of using the number of Google hits for a term as the deciding factor in assessing usage. In some cases (Britney vs. Brittany Spears) it works; in others (such as the example under discussion), the fact that "breakaway torque" has other meanings (along the lines of the torque required to get a motor to turn) skewed the results in its favor in terms of how often it's used "in the wild."
Later in the day, it was my turn to get nerdy, when I noticed that the translator of the report I'm editing used both "safety factor" and "safety margin" as translations of "запас прочности." That rang a bell from a long time ago, but I could only recall that the two English terms are, technically, not synonyms, despite what a number of technical dictionaries might indicate. I returned to Googling...
Imagine you are an engineer designing a pipe that's supposed to carry liquid under pressure, and that the working pressure is going to vary, say, between 50 and 100 psi. Since you want to make sure the pipe doesn't burst, you design the pipe to be able to withstand a pressure of, say, 500 psi. The ratio of this design pressure to the maximum specified working pressure is the safety factor. In this case, it's 500/100, or 5.
The safety margin, on the other hand, is the difference between the safety factor and the ratio of the actual operating pressure to the maximum specified working pressure. In other words, if the pipe in this example actually operates at 100 psi, this ratio is 100/100 or 1, so the safety margin is 4. If the pipe operates at 50 psi, the ratio is 50/100 or 0.5, so the safety margin is 4.5.
Then again, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble just by going to tap the neurons between Boris L.'s ears to begin with. Refreshing my acquaintance with the difference between Sicherheitsfaktor and Sicherheitsspanne, as these terms are expressed in German, didn't help me understand the Russian any better. On my way to grab a paper R/E technical dictionary, I stopped to chat with Boris, who answered the question that was on my mind, before I asked it.
safety factor = коэффициент безопасности
safety margin = запас прочности
* * * I got a call from one Marc Prior while at work. He runs a site devoted to his translation business and to Linux For Translators. The information on his site seems more oriented to the desktop, which complements nicely my own emphasis on the non-desktop side (e.g., running Wikis, Apache, MySQL, etc.). I plan to spend some time going through his site, albeit not tonight.
It's time to try to go to sleep, methinks. 'night, all.
Cheers...
Мне не спится, нет огня;There's no fire, but I remain in a vexsome mood.
Всюду мрак и сон докучный.
Ход часов лишь однозвучный
Раздается близ меня.
I can't sleep, the fire's dead;
Vexsome dreams and gloom prevailing.
Steady ticking, e'er unfailing,
From the clock, pervades my head.
It started with a running verbal battle between two fairly experienced translators as to the proper translation, into English, of the term that means the amount of torque one applies to a nut that's been tightened down to start to untighten it.
Party A maintained the term was "breakaway torque"; Party B vituperatively maintained it was "breakloose torque."
Such fireworks! So loud and distracting! With excursions on the relative merits of linguistic knowledge and practical knowledge (i.e., "that's how engineers speak"). Both sides not only considered themselves to be utterly right, but lambasted the other for being utterly wrong. No quarter was asked for, and none was given.
Finally, I got up from my seat, edged past the combatants, and spent about 30 seconds with Google, then tapped the nearest contestant on the shoulder to get his attention. (Over the years, I've found that an infusion of facts is often successful in getting people to stop repeating themselves in fruitless argument. This allows bystanders to get back to work.)
To be frank, I'd never heard of "breakloose" torque, and thought "breakaway" torque was the correct term, but what appear to be knowledgeable sources on the Internet say the former is correct, if you're unscrewing a fastener like a nut. The latter applies to the amount of torque required to turn an untightened fastener, apparently.
A lesson in passing was an illustration of the danger of using the number of Google hits for a term as the deciding factor in assessing usage. In some cases (Britney vs. Brittany Spears) it works; in others (such as the example under discussion), the fact that "breakaway torque" has other meanings (along the lines of the torque required to get a motor to turn) skewed the results in its favor in terms of how often it's used "in the wild."
Later in the day, it was my turn to get nerdy, when I noticed that the translator of the report I'm editing used both "safety factor" and "safety margin" as translations of "запас прочности." That rang a bell from a long time ago, but I could only recall that the two English terms are, technically, not synonyms, despite what a number of technical dictionaries might indicate. I returned to Googling...
Imagine you are an engineer designing a pipe that's supposed to carry liquid under pressure, and that the working pressure is going to vary, say, between 50 and 100 psi. Since you want to make sure the pipe doesn't burst, you design the pipe to be able to withstand a pressure of, say, 500 psi. The ratio of this design pressure to the maximum specified working pressure is the safety factor. In this case, it's 500/100, or 5.
The safety margin, on the other hand, is the difference between the safety factor and the ratio of the actual operating pressure to the maximum specified working pressure. In other words, if the pipe in this example actually operates at 100 psi, this ratio is 100/100 or 1, so the safety margin is 4. If the pipe operates at 50 psi, the ratio is 50/100 or 0.5, so the safety margin is 4.5.
Then again, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble just by going to tap the neurons between Boris L.'s ears to begin with. Refreshing my acquaintance with the difference between Sicherheitsfaktor and Sicherheitsspanne, as these terms are expressed in German, didn't help me understand the Russian any better. On my way to grab a paper R/E technical dictionary, I stopped to chat with Boris, who answered the question that was on my mind, before I asked it.
safety factor = коэффициент безопасности
safety margin = запас прочности
It's time to try to go to sleep, methinks. 'night, all.
Cheers...
