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Where does all the weird Chinese component terminology come from?
vk6zgo:
Strange translations are not confined to English/Chinese & vice versa, even related languages like French/ English & German/English have brought forth their share of "howlers".
The English translations of original French manuals I used to work with had some seriously inventive efforts which made them really hard to decipher, but the best was one my brother related to me:
"This equipment is designed to operate in the 3GHz 'group of musicians playing together' "!
The German manuals offered their own challenges, often because the English translation was less complete than the original, so it became necessary to look up that manual & sort out from the original German, what was meant. (I am only an English speaker, but I always found written German easier to translate from a logical basis than French.)
One thing had me, though, with some equipment which showed a circular device on the schematic, labelled with the word "Drossel".
From where it lived, it should be an inductor, but no indication of the winding configuration was shown.
Googling, it came up with "Throttle", or "thrush" ( the bird).
Surely, German would be "Induktor" if that is what it was?
Anyhow, it seems a more obscure translation is "choke", so it was an inductor, after all!
Strangely, I had never seen anything but the official term used in other German equipment, & thought that to all intents & purposes, "choke" was as archaic in German as in English.
niconiconi:
--- Quote from: vk6zgo on July 24, 2022, 01:22:32 am ---Strange translations are not confined to English/Chinese & vice versa, even related languages like French/ English & German/English have brought forth their share of "howlers".
The English translations of original French manuals I used to work with had some seriously inventive efforts which made them really hard to decipher, but the best was one my brother related to me:
"This equipment is designed to operate in the 3GHz 'group of musicians playing together' "!
--- End quote ---
:-DD
Q: What should you do when the music from a shortwave radio is too boring?
A: Try a different band.
--- Quote ---The German manuals offered their own challenges, often because the English translation was less complete than the original, so it became necessary to look up that manual & sort out from the original German, what was meant. (I am only an English speaker, but I always found written German easier to translate from a logical basis than French.)
One thing had me, though, with some equipment which showed a circular device on the schematic, labelled with the word "Drossel".
From where it lived, it should be an inductor, but no indication of the winding configuration was shown.
Googling, it came up with "Throttle", or "thrush" ( the bird).
Surely, German would be "Induktor" if that is what it was?
Anyhow, it seems a more obscure translation is "choke", so it was an inductor, after all!
Strangely, I had never seen anything but the official term used in other German equipment, & thought that to all intents & purposes, "choke" was as archaic in German as in English.
--- End quote ---
Speaking of archaic terms in translation, yep, it's really common. A standard term is one language can be an obscure or obsolete (though technically correct) one in another. For example, "condenser" entered many languages and became the standard term, before the English world decided to replace it with "capacitor".
Other classics include:
- capacity vs capacitance
To be fair: older engineers still use "capacity".
- inductor vs reactor vs choke
To be fair: reactor is still used in the electric power industry, and when inductor is used to raise impedance, it's still a choke, like "common-mode choke", "radio-frequency choke", etc. But, like many things in the world, to make it more confusing for everyone, it's also abused from time to time, like "Ringing Choke Converter".
- tension vs. potential vs. voltage
To be fair: Modern English is the outlier here. Although it has "current" (physical quantity) and "amperage" (measured value), "power" and "wattage", but for electrical potential, both are named "voltage" today. "Tension" used to be the term but it's long obsolete. This unfortunate historical coincidence further brings confusions to variable names in formulas. In English, most use the letter V, some textbooks recognized the potential confusion (no pun intended) and decided to use E, but it's still confusing since E is energy. The European and international standard U is technically better, but in an industry dominated by the US, everyone just gets used to it soon or later.
niconiconi:
--- Quote from: amc184 on July 23, 2022, 11:14:15 pm ---One of the ones I noticed on LCSC was 'horn type' capacitors. This was used for snap-in electrolytics, and while the leads do resemble an animal's horns, I've never heard this used in English. That seems to have disappeared from LCSC now though, and they've just put all the snap-in capacitors with the radial leaded ones.
--- End quote ---
Unsurprisingly, people invent slang and nicknames, and different people have different ideas. Machine translation without the knowledge of slang differences is guaranteed to produce hilarious results or gibberish.
The through-hole ribbon cable socket with two locking grabs on each ends is also known as a "cow horn (牛角) connector". Following the same reasoning, its low-cost variant without locking grabs is a simplified (简易) cow horn (牛角) connector. Thus, it's abbreviated to "简牛", or literally, a "simple cow" connector.
Indeed, when I searched for "simple cow connectors" in quote marks, I got many results from Google. :-DD :-DD :-DD
janoc:
--- Quote from: niconiconi on July 21, 2022, 08:24:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: retiredfeline on July 21, 2022, 03:24:12 am ---They often refer to soldering as welding because that is han teh (weld iron) whereas soldering is han sik (weld tin, the element not the container).
--- End quote ---
Welding, soldering and blazing are not distinguished outside technical fields, all metal-joining techniques are known as "焊接" or "焊". Hence the mistranslation.
--- End quote ---
That's the same in French, for example.
To weld or to solder is both translated the same: "souder".
So if you hope to buy a soldering iron/station, don't ask for a "machine à souder" at your local hardware store or Conrad or you will be shown a welder :-// (soldering iron is "fer à souder" - literally "iron for welding/soldering").
HwAoRrDk:
--- Quote from: niconiconi on July 24, 2022, 06:09:40 am ---The through-hole ribbon cable socket with two locking grabs on each ends is also known as a "cow horn (牛角) connector". Following the same reasoning, its low-cost variant without locking grabs is a simplified (简易) cow horn (牛角) connector. Thus, it's abbreviated to "简牛", or literally, a "simple cow" connector.
--- End quote ---
Ooh, yes, that's a good one I hadn't come across before. And checking at LCSC, of course they call them "horn buckle". ;D
And for some reason they also term the clamping clip that forms the top part of an IDC ribbon cable connector a "reflex cover". Not sure how "reflex" comes into it... :-//
--- Quote from: niconiconi on July 24, 2022, 06:09:40 am ---Indeed, when I searched for "simple cow connectors" in quote marks, I got many results from Google. :-DD :-DD :-DD
--- End quote ---
That's hilarious! :-DD
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