Sorry I don’t speak Hydraulics!<\/p>\n
On reflection, most of the tiny hurdles that stand between you, the newbie, and you, the knowledgeable employee who, a few months down the line, is clapped and cheered every morning as you enter your place of work (does this not happen to other people?) relate to the simplest of workplace customs such as understanding the finer balances of interpersonal relations, finding out who knows how the printer works and to learning how often to offer to make everyone else a hot drink.<\/p>\n
In the right environment, feeling like you belong shouldn\u2019t take much time at all, but sounding like you belong might take a little longer…<\/p>\n
As with every industry, the hydraulic hose crimping industry speaks its own technical language, a combination of highly specific terms and well-established jargon to set it apart. In fact, I\u2019d say that our industry sits even further apart in that the subject itself is so niche, yet in many cases there is no standardisation in terminology, meaning that a relatively fixed list of equipment is referred to by any number of names and combinations of descriptions.<\/p>\n
At Hydralok, most of us speak two or three languages meaning that we\u2019ve had to tackle these linguistic technical difficulties on several fronts, often with quite interesting results.<\/p>\n
The translation for \u2018die set\u2019 brings up some good examples. Whilst \u2018jeu des mors\u2019 in French, which translates as \u2018set of jaws\u2019, just about makes sense, I only initially knew the Spanish equivalent, \u2018mordaza\u2019, to mean \u2018gag\u2019, as in \u2018ley mordaza\u2019 or \u2018gag rule\u2019. When a South American customer asked for eight female greyhounds for their swaging machine, I was even more confused. It turns out \u2018galga\u2019 – which does indeed translate at \u2018female greyhound\u2019 – can also mean \u2018die set\u2019 and is also the name of a species of yellow ant in Honduras. This was also news to me, but I imagine that all the Spanish-speaking myrmecologists* out there probably already knew that.<\/p>\n
Ever fashion-conscious, French hydraulic engineers even have hydraulic skirts or \u2018jupes hydrauliques\u2019. Whilst the mind boggles at the potential applications of hydraulic clothing, that doesn\u2019t quite tell the whole story. \u2018Jupe\u2019 is the French word for \u2018ferrule\u2019, which I suppose makes perfect sense if you were to think of a hydraulic hose as a pair of human legs. Even so, I\u2019d say that if it takes more than 100 tonnes of crimping force to get your skirt on securely, it\u2019s almost definitely too small. The word in French for the main part of the machine, the \u2018head\u2019 in English, is \u2018cloche\u2019, which translates literally as \u2018bell\u2019 and prompted a bit of confusion the first time we heard it in the office \u2013 the word, not the bell.<\/p>\n
Across France and Spain, a quite common translation of \u2018hose\u2019 is \u2018flexible\u2019 (say it in the French-est or Spanish-est accent you can). However, if you\u2019ve ever tried bending one of these hydraulic hoses, you\u2019ll likely agree that \u2018flexible\u2019 is the last word you\u2019d use to describe them!<\/p>\n
Almost no matter the description, with a healthy mix of determination and good humour, we always manage to decipher even the most uncommon technical requests. After all – and I don\u2019t want to jinx it \u2013 to this day we still haven\u2019t sent any customer a box of eight yellow Honduran ants or a brand new replacement bell.<\/p>\n
*Specialists in the study of ants<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sorry I don’t speak Hydraulics! On reflection, most of the tiny hurdles that stand between you, the newbie, and you, the knowledgeable employee who, a few months down the line, is clapped and cheered every morning as you enter your place of work (does this not happen to other people?) relate to the simplest of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people"],"yoast_head":"\n