Climbing in other languages

What do climbers in other languages call cams, nuts, different types of pitons, quickdraws etc.?  What do they call holds? Jugs, Crimps, slopers etc.  What about flashing, redpointing, etc.?  I want to know.

English: cams, nuts, and quickdraws

Spanish: levas, nueces y cintas de vertido

French: cames, écrous et dégaines

German: Nocken, Muttern und Expressschleifen

Japanese: カム、ナット、クイックドロー (may not display right for your browser)

Chinese (simple): 凸轮，坚果和快速拉伸 (may not display right for your browser)

You know google has this cool thing called translate and I am pretty sure there are things out there that will read in different languages for you.

ViperScale wrote:

English: cams, nuts, and quickdraws

Spanish: levas, nueces y cintas de vertido

French: cames, écrous et dégaines

German: Nocken, Muttern und Expressschleifen

Japanese: カム、ナット、クイックドロー (may not display right for your browser)

Chinese (simple): 凸轮，坚果和快速拉伸 (may not display right for your browser)

You know google has this cool thing called translate and I am pretty sure there are things out there that will read in different languages for you.

I know about google translate, but things in other languages are not always a direct translation.  A cam could be "Expansion device" in spanish.

OP is right cams are coinceurs in French.

Degaines is correct though.

Cool topic.

Some of the ones I can remember easily are below. Some of the literal translations are not how a Chinese person would conceptualize it (native speakers tend to group characters into their larger conceptual meaning, rather than looking at every character's individual meaning), but I think it is pretty amusing for English speakers to see what each character directly translates as. Also, some climbing terms do not have a Chinese equivalent, and Chinese climbers either have their own translations or simply opt for the English word. For example, I have never heard a consistent translation for terms like "sloper," "rappelling," or "nuts." They'll come eventually, I'd guess. Anyways:

- Bolt: guapian (literally "hanging small flat thing")

- Cam: yansai (literally "cliff plug")

- Crag: yanchang (literally "cliff large flat area")

- Crampons: bingxie (literally "ice shoes")

- Dynamic rope: donglisheng (literally "motion force rope")

- Harness: anquandai (literally "safety strap," and it is actually the same word used for "seatbelt")

- Locking 'biner: zhusuo (literally "master lock")

- Pitons: as far as I know dingzi (just the common word for any kind of nail, but I could see it being called yanding, which would mean "cliff nail," but I don't know for sure...)

- Quickdraws and non-lockers: kuaigua (literally "fast/quick hanger")

(I omitted Chinese characters and English tone marks because they tend to get scrambled and unreadable when the browser freaks out about reading Chinese... much like us English-speaking humans...)

RyderS Stroud wrote:

Some of the ones I can remember easily are below. Some of the literal translations are not how a Chinese person would conceptualize it (native speakers tend to group characters into their larger conceptual meaning, rather than looking at every character's individual meaning), but I think it is pretty amusing for English speakers to see what each character directly translates as. Also, some climbing terms do not have a Chinese equivalent, and Chinese climbers either have their own translations or simply opt for the English word. For example, I have never heard a consistent translation for terms like "sloper," "rappelling," or "nuts." They'll come eventually, I'd guess. Anyways:

- Bolt: guapian (literally "hanging small flat thing")

- Cam: yansai (literally "cliff plug")

- Crag: yanchang (literally "cliff large flat area")

- Crampons: bingxie (literally "ice shoes")

- Dynamic rope: donglisheng (literally "motion force rope")

- Harness: anquandai (literally "safety strap," and it is actually the same word used for "seatbelt")

- Locking 'biner: zhusuo (literally "master lock")

- Pitons: as far as I know dingzi (just the common word for any kind of nail, but I could see it being called yanding, which would mean "cliff nail," but I don't know for sure...)

- Quickdraws and non-lockers: kuaigua (literally "fast/quick hanger")

(I omitted Chinese characters and English tone marks because they tend to get scrambled and unreadable when the browser freaks out about reading Chinese... much like us English-speaking humans...)

Sick! thanks.

I only know one non-English climbing term, and it's fun to say:

Rotpunkt

Pies de gato = "climbing shoes' in Spanish literal translation is "cat feet"

aaaahhhhhhhhhh = "oh shit, I'm falling" - universal language 

Bill 1552 wrote:

Pies de gato = "climbing shoes' in Spanish literal translation is "cat feet"

aaaahhhhhhhhhh = "oh shit, I'm falling" - universal language 

hahahoho!

Jimmy Yammine wrote:

cams are coinceurs in French.

"coinceurs" in French are what we call stoppers or nuts in American English.

Lots of French climbers nowadays use the word "cams" (or sometimes "friends"?) for what we call "camming devices".

. . (quote from p15 of the 2017 guidebook "Escalade Les Calanques" for the multi-pitch Trad route La Verdisse: "Coinceurs, friends jusq'au C4 #3, sangles, et 5 pitons indispensables")

A word I've heard used frequently at indoor gyms by climbers speaking any of Italian, German, or French is pronounced: ah-lay.

.  . (Perhaps a more interesting topic is differences in words between American and UK climbers).

Another interesting topic is situations where the _concepts_ do not "line up" between climbing communities in different language areas, which then leads to puzzling confusion about equivalent words, because there is no single equivalent pair of words.
Like French "relais" versus English "belay".

Ken

Hmmm...Viper Scale, I assume that was Google...; )

At least here in Spain, my climbing partners say "friends" (free-ends) for any type of cam, "fisureros" (fee-sue-rare-ohs) for nuts, "cintas" (seen-tahs) or "cintas express" (seen-tahs espress) for quickdraws.  I am sure there are regionalisms, too. And terms in Spain may be very different than, say, Argentina or Mexico.

Here is an interesting and useful link with pictures for terms they use in Spain:

http://www.escalamadrid.com/terminologia/

Finally, a story...this, from a recent climbing partner. It seems he and a friend/friends were out bouldering somewhere in a Spanish-speaking region and they came across some locals climbing around the rocks as well. So, excited to practice their very basic Spanish, they asked the Spanish-speaking locals if they wanted to join them as they bouldered: "Quieres escalar con nosotros sin ropa?". They thought they were saying "climbing without a rope" and couldn't understand why the local climbers responded with such incredulous expressions.

In Dutch we use a lot of English and German words in climbing, no wonder for a country without mountains. Some things with a real dutch word:

Rope: touw.

Harness: gordel

Bolts: boorhaken

Jug: bak

Quickdraw: setje

Climbing: klimmen

Faling: vallen

As for German:

- a cam is just called cam mostly. The term was adopted and its whats most commonly used. The official term would be Klemmgeraet which translates exactly to camming device.
- nuts are called Klemmkeil (cam wedge)
- glue-ins are Klebehaken (gluehook)
- regualr bolts are Bohrhaken (drill hooks)
- pitons are Normalhaken (you guessed it, normal hooks)
- a quickdraw is Expressschlinge (express sling, duh)
- carabiners are just that, screw locks are reffered to as Schrauber (screws)
- red pointing (Rot-Punkt, Term comes from Wolfgang Guellich)
- sending (durchsteigen, "through-climbing)
- jugs (Henkel)
- crimps (Leisten)
- threads (Sanduhr, translates to hour glass)

In French:

-cam: friend (pronounciation depends on how (un)familiar the climber is with the English language)

-nut: coinceur

-quickdraw: dégaine, paire

-rope: corde

-harness: baudrier

-karabiner: mousqueton, mousquif, skif

-jug: bac, bacquet, bacasse

-crimp: réglette, règle (rule(r))

-sloper: plat, aplat (flat)

-gaston: épaule (shoulder)

-sidepull: verticale

-undercling: inverse, inversée

-dyno: jeté (throw)

-flash: flash

-redpoint: après travail (after work)

-onsight: à vue (...on sight)

-climbing: escalade

-rappel: guess what?

-shit/bugger/fuck/etc.: putain ("whore"), merde ("shit"), putain de merde ("shit whore"?), bordel ("brothel")

-come on: allez

-John Bachar: Patrick Edlinger

-Yosemite: le Yozémeet

Adrien G. wrote:

In French:

-cam: friend (pronounciation depends on how (un)familiar the climber is with the English language)

-nut: coinceur

-quickdraw: dégaine, paire

-rope: corde

-harness: baudrier

-karabiner: mousqueton, mousquif, skif

-jug: bac, bacquet, bacasse

-crimp: réglette, règle (rule(r))

-sloper: plat, aplat (flat)

-gaston: épaule (shoulder)

-sidepull: verticale

-undercling: inverse, inversée

-dyno: jeté (throw)

-flash: flash

-redpoint: après travail (after work)

-onsight: à vue (...on sight)

-climbing: escalade

-rappel: guess what?

-shit/bugger/fuck/etc.: putain ("whore"), merde ("shit"), putain de merde ("shit whore"?), bordel ("brothel")

-come on: allez

-John Bachar: Patrick Edlinger

-Yosemite: le Yozémeet

Good stuff! But what do they call an arete?

Russians use a lot of English and German terms.
e.g. Bouldering=bouldering.

Couple German- origin words:
Dulfer = rappel, applied to a regular rappel with an ATC or a figure 8, not just to Dulfersitz.
repschnuhr = cord, generally prussic cord.

Here are some terms that use Russian words:
Rope = Verjevka
Quickdraw = Ot'tyazhka
gear (cams, etc. all together) = zhelezo ( means "metal")
nut/stopper would be called "zakladka" , or maybe prostaya zakladka
cam=eksentrik (pronounced like eccentric, I guess it is also not a Russian word, technically)
piton=skal'nyj kriuk
bolt=shlyambur (technically also not a Russian word... I'm guessing a German origin)

climbing shoes=skal'niki
harness=obvyazka, some people use that only for full harness, and use "besedka" for seat harness, i.e. your typical harness..

crampons=koshki (means cats)
crampon points=zuby (teeth)
avalanche=lavina

Crimp=mikrushka (from micro, small)
pocket= karman, or a lot of people also just say pocket
hold in general=zatsep, zatsepka.

Adrien G. wrote:

So then what do French climbers call their other much-sought USA destinations:
. * Red River Gorge?
. * Indian Creek? (for the non-zero number who climb Trad).
. * Smith Rocks?

We stick to their actual names I guess? I mentioned Yosemite because for some reason, French climbers pronounce it in a different way (Yozémeet) than French non-climbers (Yozmeet) and feel compelled to add "le", which standard tourists don't (I think).

Good stuff! But what do they call an arete?

Le ridge ;-)

A related question:  what is the term for “rock climbing” in these other languages (Spanish, French, German, as well as other forms of Spanish language such as in Mexico). 

kenr wrote:

So then what do French climbers call their other much-sought USA destinations:
. * Red River Gorge?
. * Indian Creek? (for the non-zero number who climb Trad).
. * Smith Rocks?

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Adrien G. wrote:
> John Bachar: Patrick Edlinger

"le Blond" 

quiz (5 points) ? Who was "the other Patrick" ?

quiz (10 points) ? What did Catherine Destivelle's then-12-year-old son say when she told him that Patrick Edlinger had died?

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words more useful for actually climbing with a French-speaking partner:
(3 points each)

. * sec = ?

. * mou = ?

. * aval = ?

. * relais = ?

. * vas-y = ? 

. * j'y vais = ?

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bonus question:
(20 points)

? Why is the most frequent French translation word for the English term "belay" often misleading for French climbers?

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Quiz - 10points: l'escalade tu connais?