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The girl at the Hellschreiber

Hellschreiber – or the devil’s writing

Article by HE Translations marketing representative Mike Gayler

Those of a certain age will remember both telexes and fax machines. If you are a mere youngster, let me try to explain:

Telex was a way of sending typed messages from one ‘typewriter’ to another (please tell me you do vaguely know what a typewriter is? No? OK – let’s say from one keyboard to another).
The sending operator typed the message into his keyboard and it was sent through the phone system to the receiving keyboard, where the message would be printed out. How, you ask, did it get to the right place? Every keyboard had its own identification – originally not a number, but a name. Names like ‘Interflora’ , ‘Interpol’ or ‘Insurance’.Continue reading full article…

Diagram of the Agile method

What is agile today ?

How agile are you? Or rather, how agile is your company, and what does that mean today if you are not professional steeplejacks?  It is curious how this term became such a ubiquitous buzzword, as some find themselves thinking they need to race to catch up with a speeding trend, rather than risk being left behind and seen as clumsy or unbalanced.

A Management Today Words-Worth piece by John Morrish examined the question and indeed the word itself:Continue reading full article…

flame rising from Bunsen burner

Robert Bunsen – his burner and its impact on the gas industry

flame rising from Bunsen burner

A Bunsen burner

Article by Dr Fred Starr PhD, FIMMM, FIE, MIMechE, CEng

When thinking of key German Scientists, I recollect our Chemistry Lab, at my school in Stockton-on-Tees, where adorning the polished benches, was, in a sense, the greatest of all scientific devices, a set of Bunsen burners. Artifact of every Mad Scientist movie. The first real job for our aged, silvery haired, and distinguished Chemistry master, Mr Dee, was to show us how this amazing device worked. When the slider was closed, flame was luminous and wafted around in a lazy manner. True magic came with the opening of the slider, when the burner was noisier, and although now a transparent blue, was obviously hotter. “Never allow the flame to light back” he proclaimed. “The gas that’s produced will kill you!”
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Paper glider

Ludwig Prandtl 1875-1953 – The man behind the science of aerodynamics

Article by Dr Fred Starr PhD, FIMMM, FIE, MIMechE, CEng

Ludwig Prandtl with his fluid test channel

Ludwig Prandtl is shown next to the water channel which he used in his early boundary layer investigations.

Ever wondered why you have to brush the dust off a piece of furniture? Not being able to blow it away? And were you puzzled that golf balls are knobbly rather than smooth? Surely a smoother ball should be more streamlined, and fly further? Or when boarding a jumbo jet, asked yourself why do the wings have to be so long, almost to the point of being floppy? Wouldn’t square shaped wings, attached along the length of the fuselage, be more sturdy?

The man who supplied us with the answer to these questions, the last one, being at one time a state secret, was Ludwig Prandtl, the greatest of all German Aeronautical Scientists. And a great bunch they were. Prandtl was there at the start of the business, when, although Lilienthal had died in his glider experiments, and the Wright Brothers had flown, there was no clear idea what kept an aircraft in the air. No one, in fact, had any idea, how best to design the most important attribute of an aircraft, the wings.

Continue reading full article…

Portrait of Johannes Kepler

Kepler: the first cosmologist

Johannes Kepler 1571-1630

Another view

Article by Dr Fred Starr PhD, FIMMM, FIE, MIMechE, CEng

Johannes Kepler was, arguably, the first and most important scientific son of Germany, long before it came to be a nation. Kepler was a true genius, who had to move from one country to another to earn a living and to avoid religious persecution, and he can also be claimed for Europe itself.

Kepler’s insight into how the planets move round the sun showed the need for a new physics of the Universe. That is, one that proposed a rational and testable scientific theory. Before Kepler, the belief that the sun, moon, planets and stars revolved round the Earth once a day, being kept in position with invisible rotating crystalline spheres, required no further discussion. Copernicus was stuck with circular motions for how the planets moved, as was Galileo.Continue reading full article…

Question mark in labyrinth

Translating web pages – easy snap or tempting translation trap?

Could you just translate this web page please? Well…

Spider in spiderwebIt’s easy you say, but a simple request that sounds like a snap can turn into a translation trap. Web pages are where we read these days, so why not start the job there and just translate what you see on the website? Well, web pages are actually made up of not just the words and images you see on the surface, but also technical code you don’t see, and styling you do, so you may regret your words when you find yourself swimming in a simmering sea of alphabet soup. And what if the result can’t be served up in a way that can be readily consumed? So before just jumping in and translating web pages, let’s look at what really is on a web page and how the text there might, or might not, mesh with the professional translation process to deliver a successful result – in a final format translator and client can readily use.
Continue reading full article…

Image of Gears

Germany’s Mittelstand: standstill or foundation of the Industrie 4.0 future?

The German economy owes much of its success to the country’s Mittelstand, a uniquely German term used to refer to Germany’s highly developed and export-oriented mid-sized business sector. Mittelstand is roughly translated into English as SME or Small and Medium Enterprise sector, but the Mittelstand is characterised by more than just the simple number of employees or the size of the annual turnover. Due to its ethos and importance, and focus on manufacturing, the Mittelstand has been the subject of considerable study and discussion, as well as concerns for its future when facing the challenges of technological change and international competition. Clearly it can’t afford to stand still if the German Wirtschaftswunder is to continue, so what is the Mittelstand and where is it going? Can small business and manufacturing survive in a world of globalised giants and the feverish flow of investor funds into speculative startups?Continue reading full article…

Battery Storage Guide book cover

Battery Storage Guide now on sale

A topical new energy study is out this month and charging ahead with the publication of The Definitive Guide to Commercial and Industrial Battery Storage Systems. This thorough new report from German energy consultancy denersol, in cooperation with publishers DGS Franken, has been translated by the experts at HE Translations.

HE Translations are specialists in the Energiewende, the ongoing energy transition to sustainable energy, and are offering a 20% discount off the purchase price to early bird buyers in the month of May only.Continue reading full article…

Batteriespeicher book jacket

Translating the Guide to Commercial and Industrial Battery Storage

Batteriespeicher book jacketHE Translations are pleased to be translating from German a valuable new resource, a definitive guide to the commercial and industrial battery storage technology and products available today. This comprehensive guide has been researched and written by expert Dietmar Geckeler of German energy consultancy Denersol, who specialise in decentralised energy solutions.

The transition to sustainable energy sources, known in German as the Energiewende, faces a significant challenge when energy from renewables must be stored outside the active generation period to provide a continuous power supply. So what exactly are energy storage systems, and where do we find them, and how do we use them?
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five stars rating

Top tips for a successful technical translation

five stars ratingWhen you need a translation of a technical text or manual, what you really are looking for is a specialist expert in this field to do the  job right. A serious translation ensures the accurate and usable rendering of descriptions and instructions into the target language, preventing time-consuming and expensive misunderstandings which could arise later. To achieve this an effective translator needs to understand not just the words on the page, but the technical processes and functioning of a technology or product.

Mastering this technical task calls for specialist understanding and experience, as well as an ability to be clear and unambiguous. And of course a well-written and clear original text is the best starting point, so here we offer a few tips from our long experience to get you going in the right direction. Just as you would not print blurred instructions just to save on ink, you wouldn’t want your meaning to be lost in translation.

The five Es for excellence in translation:

Continue reading full article…