My hovercraft is full of eels; or, labelling follies

[unixronin]

I've been installing and/or replacing a few lights recently, including a couple of track light systems in the kitchen and elsewhere.  I picked up an electrical connection kit for one of these today, after realizing part-way through installation that the type I had wasn't going to work in my application.

What I got is labelled in English as a "End Feed Connector".  This is translated on the package into Spanish as "Conector de alimentacíon de extremo".

Now, I don't speak any significant amount of Spanish.  But, based on my knowledge of word roots in various different language families, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that just maybe, alimentacíon (food and nourishment for the body, from Latin alimentum/ailimentarius, nourishment, pertaining to food) wasn't quite the right word here.  Suministro (supply, provision), or even aprovisionamiento, is probably a bit closer to the mark, and suministro eléctrico would probably hit the nail pretty close to the head (particularly since I found that exact phrase as a dictionary example, translated as 'electrical supply').  And I have a suspicion they got extremo wrong as well ... I suspect fin or possibly punta is closer to correct.

I can't help wondering whether native Spanish-speakers giggle as much when they see package text like this as native English-speakers do when we see a prime example of "Engrish as she is spoke".

Comments

Re: 7 words for you

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

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