alexpgp | A curious find... (Reply)

I recently ran across a metal business card file that I used when I worked at Plenum. Inside were several hundred business cards whose backs I used to record a variety of informative tidbits that fell mostly under the rubric of "style notes," although some approached the level of terminology definitions. Back in the day, you see, as a translator or translation editor, you were only as good as your references or your access to them.

Actually, that's still true. (It's just that the Internet gives you a tremendous reference capability.)

Mixed in are some vocabulary notes of my own. Some highlights from the collection:

Do not use "crystalline structure" unless you specifically intend to distinguish from "noncrystalline," i.e., "the precipitate was crystalline." Instead, use "crystal structure."

It is the "variational principle" when speaking of the physical singularity, not "variation principle." (Here, I even have a citation: Sov. J. Phys., No. 7, p. 7, 1978.)

Use "Lp" not "LP" as an abbreviation for Lorentz polarization.

How to translate "каркас": skeleton or framework? Editor says "skeletons occur in animals; frameworks occur in crystals." Since my group didn't cover biology, this must've come from the crystallography editor.

Valsalva maneuver. Expiration with the nose closed and the mouth shut to test the patency of the eustachian tubes. I remember jotting this one down because it's one of the first things you learn to do to equalize pressure in your head while skindiving.

Of course, I was merely a collector and implementer of such trivia, not an evaluator, so it's hard for me to judge whether the various comments of our technical editors of that era are spot on or - as often seems to be the case in this industry - merely a variation in the "construction of a tribal lay."

Cheers...