FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Pete Modreski]

Dear Forum friends,
I have a question which I'm sure any of our many Spanish-speaking participants can answer for me, including probably Jordi himself. And I think you may be amused to hear the background on my question, about my apparent mis-use of the Spanish translation of one mineral-related term.

I had prepared a sheet of rock and mineral terms in English and Spanish, which I use and hand out often at educational science events at schools and at mineral shows here (and in Tucson), because there are many Spanish-speaking school children in Denver and elsewhere. I often have learned quite a bit about connections in word origins, seeing how the terms appear in different languages. For example, when I learned that the Spanish word for sand is "arena", I realized that this is not only the meaning of many place names for areas with sandy beaches (such as Punta Arenas), but for the common English word "arena", meaning an open amphitheater where events take place--originally, having a sandy floor--as well as the technical geological term for a sedimentary rock composed of sand-sized mineral grains, "arenite".

Anyway, the term I had been in doubt about, and which someone recently pointed out had been incorrectly translated by me (and please now, don't everyone who knows Spanish, laugh too hard at me for this), is the Spanish term for "petrified wood", which I know believe to be properly, "madera petrificada". Now, that's very simple, but when I had earlier looked up the translation of this term online, I had been led to the phrase, "madera aterrorizada", and that is what I had originally typed on my list.

Some may immediately realize how I had been led to this wrong translation, because "aterrorizada" means, "terrorized". But "petrified" in English of course, as well as meaning "turned to stone", also has a more figurative meaning of "scared stiff", meaning "shocked, afraid to move a muscle", standing as still as stone, i.e., terrorized; and some online translation sources that I had used for my Spanish terms, obviously had given me this literal meaning for "petrified".

Now, what particularly surprised me though, and helped lead me to think that my incorrect silly translation was the right one, is that when one searches online for "madera aterrorizada", one actually does come up with a number of websites actually using this term, in Spanish, for petrified wood. For example, here, from an article in Wikipedia about the Petrified Forest, Arizona, giving as a figure caption in Spanish:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wood_in_Petrified_Forest_National_Park.jpg
Español: Foto de la madera aterrorizada y fragmentos de la madera aterrorizada en el parque nacional del bosque aterrorizado, Arizona, los E.E.U.U..

and here, one in Spanish about "Field adventures in Alaska",
Aventuras del Campo: Alaska 1 - Pasó la tarde que intentaba encontrar la capa del hueso al sur, después prospectando encima de la playa donde encontré un poco de madera aterrorizada muy ...
www.fieldadventures.org/alaska/alaskasp/colville1sp.html

and even here, a website selling mosaic tables made of wood, including some of petrified wood:
madera del mosaico Fabricantes & madera del mosaico Suministradores - ]También exportadores de venta al por mayor madera del mosaico. ... Mosaico de madera aterrorizada. color apacible alto brillo ...
spanish.alibaba.com/search/mosaic-wood-1.html

I am realizing now that, I presume, all these instances of usage online of "madera aterrorizada" are presumably the same kind of error that I was making--the use of a literal machine translation without realizing what it was giving them. So, I'll just end with my question to Jordi and others on the forum--just to confirm this for certain, in Spanish, what really is the correct term for "petrified wood"; is it always simply "madera petrificada", or is in fact, "madera aterrorizada" ever really used in Spanish, for petrified wood?

Thank you, and I hope this may have given some people a chuckle, to read about my error,

Pete Modreski

[lluis]

Good afternoon, Pete

I will try to answer, hoping that you will not laugh to loud at my incorrections in english

As far as I know, the prefered term for petrified wood would be "xilopalo" (wood opal), then "madera fosilizada" (fosilized wood). Madera petrificada is the direct translation, but is not used, although any spanish speaker will understand.
Madera aterrorizada is the first time I have heard, and probably is a creation of the automatic translators.
Although this one I found works well

https://www.elmundo.es/traductor/
(link normalized by FMF)

I could understand the underlying reason: Medusa petrified people because they get terrorized.....But that is a really a twist on things.....

Hope that serves (and that you does not laugh to much at my poor english)

With best wishes

Lluís

[alfredo]

Pete, I loved this story!

A good test of machine translation programmes (which are always lousy in my experience) is double translation - Translate something, and then ask it to translate back to the source language again. The classic example of this, perhaps apocryphal, from way back when such programmes were first invented, was the researcher who asked the machine to translate the english phrase "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak", into Russian and then back to English. It came back as "The vodka is pretty good but the meat is spoiled".

[Tracy]

Not meaning to stir things up a bit further: isn't most petrified wood silicified, not opalized? If I am right, "xilopalo" would technically be incorrect for most petrified wood slabs.

I vote for fossilized wood, it's pretty straightforward in both languages.

- Tracy

[lluis]

Hi, Tracy/Alfredo

Completely agreed, Tracy, but languages are not always clever and some things are odd till next generation changes things.
As an example, "sofisticado" in spanish meaned "false"; now by influences to english the meaning in which people uses it is "sophisticated".
An a "cerveza destilada", a distilled beer, is not evidently a distilled beer, but a very elaborated beer, an abbey beer.
In old times, distilled meaned "ellaborated"...

I use to use fossilized...

Alfredo: the re-translation from russian to english is great!

With best wishes

Lluís

[yowanni]

I'm agree with Alfredo.
The machine translation can change what we want to say. Therefore, I believe that the best way of using them is of the reverse: first you will try to write in Spanish, and after, you can use the automatic translation machine for read this text in English. If you can understand the text in English your Spanish text is correct.
(I also use this system. If I am confused you are not going to understand me, jejejjeje)

[Pete Modreski]

First, to Lluis and Yowanni, don't worry about your English, I think we can all understand quite well what you are saying.

And it's true that most petrified wood is silicified (cryptocrystalline quartz) rather than opalized; the opalized wood (xilopalo) is a more unusual variety.

For my own purpose (a list of Spanish-English terms given to students and teachers studying rocks), I will probably stick with "madera petrificada" for its close simiilarity to the English "petrified wood", rather than "madera fosilizada". Now of course, we do make a distinction in English between the two terms; "fossilized" can refer to any type of preserved fossil material, which in some cases can be soft, carbon-rich material, not suitable for lapidary purposes, whereas "petrified" is used specifically for materials which has been replaced by hard, durable, silica.

One other comment; an additional reason that I at first uncritically assumed that "aterrorizada" was correct for "petrified", was that I thought (quite wrongly, as I now see), that this word, aterrorizada, perhaps had a relationship to the French word, "terroir", which is used in connection with wine and the soil and climate in which it is grown; for example, from Wikipedia,

Terroir, "originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon them."

Knowing that "terroir" includes aspects of the influence that bedrock and soil have on the qualities of wine, I probably assumed that "aterrorizade" had a similar meaning in reference to the fossil wood. I now realize that the two terms, French and Spanish respectively, have absolutely nothing in common.

And, Lluis, thank you for pointing out the analogy to Medusa, I hadn't actually made that connection to the meaning of "petrified" yet myself!

Pete

[lluis]

Good afternoon, Pete

Thanks for reading (and suffering :-) ) my english....

Terroir in french translates (more or less) as terruño in spanish

Un vino del terruño would be translated as un vin du terroir.
In both cases, is derived from terra (earth), not from terror.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh! Idioms are so illogical......

With best wishes

Lluís

[alfredo]

idioms illogical? Yes, try to translate literally the english idiom "I ran out of gas"!

[lluis]

Hola, Alfredo

Well, easily understandable :-): He corrido fuera de gas/gasolina.....

Correct would be : me quedé sin gasolina

I always wondered about sanskrit: the perfectly constructed idiom (its meaning; they do not need greatmothers.....).
Maybe is so......

With best wishes

Lluís

[chris]

Hi Pete,

To complete your "terroir" description, it refers to a good (usually food or beverage) produced in a geographically specific location, that location adding particularities you just can't find elsewhere (ground, grass, water, sun exposure...).

As you were talking about petrified wood (bois pétrifié in French) I've included a picture taken at Petrified Forest NP.

Enjoy

Christophe

[Carles Curto]

Be care Lluis. Xilópalo is the name used for opalized fossil wood and, by extension, (more or less fortunately) for silicified wood.
It's true that most of fossil wood is opal or quartz but I understand that petrified wood (madera petrificada) includes another possibilities of substitution by minerals or rocks, as (the most simple and usual) lignite (or another coal) or limestone (Calcite).
I think petrified wood (madera petrificada) is a popular voice. Properly and geologically (if we don't exactly know the litological composition), fossil wood (madera fossil) should be more correct.

[Carles Curto]

Ho, ho, ho!
Pete, a nice history that should make us think about our capacity of communication.
Sometimes, when I write to English forum, I feel English-American readers must understand something similar from my sentences (I am conscientious of my terrible English – or may I say terrorizing English?).
Babel Tower remains on every one of the World languages.

[James Catmur]

Interesting debate. I recently did a hike looking for a mine and all I found was fossil wood (lots of it acctually). Now this was your more traditional cast fossil, but it was in sandstone so the fossil is made of quartz but it is not opal and not silicified, it is just grains of quartz bonded together in the shape of the cast. So in this case I guess we we are talking about 'un fosil de madera'?

James

[alfredo]

Briefly back to the internet translation facet of this discussion:
I can't read korean, so this morning I asked google to translate the title of a korean mineralogical article into english, and I got:

"Adults are out of coal seam hamwooranyum okcheongye research on uranium."

Somehow I don't think that can be right.

[chris]

Hi Alfredo,

You remind me one of the first time I tried online translation tools to translate an English text into French. The result was so hilarious that I had decided not to use such tool anymore...

About your concern, could you post the original title in the forum. I'll try the Korean to French translation for you. If the result is better than the one you got, I'll translate the French version in English.

Christophe