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schminken

I teach engineers. They have trouble using the words "failure, error, mistake, fault" because they are using the German "Fehler" for all of these. how could I explain the difference in a general or technical sense?

Chris · Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2004 7:47 pm Post subject:

Hey!

I'm also teaching engineers and having a b**ch of a time doing the same. However, I did devise an exercise to do it... BUT, it is the weekend, so if you want to pm me with your email, I will try to remember on Monday to send you something.

Chris

Susan K · Joined: 22 Jul 2004 Posts: 19 Location: (East Germany)

- Pr�zisionsger�tebau- Fehlerkompensationsmethoden- Precision instruments- Methods of failure compensation

I had the above for Korrektur - topics for bilingual conference, IWK (if you're interested), this week, added
(nur f�r Ausfall � lieber: Error compensation techniques ?)-

but had to leave it to the Uni to choose which they meant. You're right about the difficulty. One thing I would do is ask them to consider a possible synonym in German every time it comes up, and teach them the list with the German synonym attached. Boring, but they are well-trained in learning from lists!

go2guy · Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 74 Location: France

How many of the underlined words can be used interchangeably in the following sentences?

It wasn't my fault; Whose fault was it?

Moving to Germany was a big mistake

His error cost the company a lot of money.

What we have here is a failure to communicate!

Would you have to use "fehler" to translate each? I know the examples aren't of the technical sort engineers may be looking for but perhaps if they see a number of examples (get out your brainstorming pad!) of how these 4 words are commonly used in English they may develop a more natural "feel" for when they should be used.

Anyway, some random notes. Hope they help!

schminken · Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2004 8:31 am Post subject:

Thanks for all the great suggestions! Most of these words are used in the area of Real Time Systems and the only thing I could come up with is:

When a system does something other than what is specified=Failure

What causes a failure? an error

What causes an error? a fault.

SueH · Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Posts: 1022 Location: Northern Italy

I'm not an engineer but you might like to illustrate the words using (inter alia) the terms 'Mean time between failure', 'margin of error'.

Or demonstrate using a musical instrument: failure if it doesn't play at all, mistake which you make, blame the instrument for a fault, or tell them it was an error you ever tried to play in the first place!