marzolian

I have been a technical translator for about 17 years. A few years during that time I worked as an engineer for an oilfield equipment company, and before that I worked in Venezuela in the oil equipment business. Jamesmk (Jaime), you should have mentioned where you were posting from. In the oilfield as in real estate and in many other industries, the most important words are "location location location". It can make a lot of difference whether you're talking about Spanish in the oilfield in Texas, in Mexico, in Venezuela or Argentina. Copelandci, Spanish-speaking oil workers in Texas, maybe in California or northern Mexico might say "pipa" for pipe, but nowhere else. Nothing against people who do roughnecking or other physical labor, I respect that, but even in those locations "pipa" would mark the speaker as uneducated. Engineers and managers would not call it that, and you won't find it written down in operating manuals, training materials, catalogs, technical specifications, etc. In general, a piece of pipe (such as tubing) anywhere is a "tubo". In general, pipe is "tubería". ed_freire: You saw "joint", and assumed that the user was talking about a marijuana cigarette, and gave some Spanish slang. Did you actually understand the inquiry or are you trying to be funny? Levi, I will give you credit for trying to be serious. But the word you're looking for is "pedazo", not "pedaso". And people who work with it every day don't say "pedazo de tubería", they say "tubo". The other words you mention are good words (ensambladura, unión, junta) but they still don't mean what James needs. In regular English, a "joint" is the connection between two things, such as two pieces of pipe. However, in the oilfield it can mean just one piece of pipe, especially if it's tubing, casing, or drill pipe that is going to be lowered into a well. It sounds confusing, but it's not when you work with it for a little while. I hope this thread is not typical of the level of discussion that goes on in this forum, or it's a colossal waste of time. Not just for me, but for all of you. Steven Marzuola