B D Finch Oct 10, 2018:

@abe(L)solano I freely admit that I "lack hands-on experience in a laboratory" and certainly wouldn't accept translation work in this field. But, from the purely linguistic point of view, shouldn't "badly coated" be "mal chargée" and "well coated" "bien chargée"?

abe(L)solano Oct 10, 2018:

Exactly: Poorly coated is a worst case scenario for the validation of the analytical method, since they want to check the sensitivity and quantification limits in "poor" (faiblement chargée = badly coated) and "good conditions" (fortement chargée = well coated), besides the negative control. The coating is defective prepared on purpose. But the concept it's difficult to understand for people who lack hands-on experience in a laboratory.

B D Finch Oct 10, 2018:

@abe(L)solano If a bead was described as "poorly" coated, that would mean that its coating fell short of some idea of what a perfect coating would be. So, it could mean that the coating had poor adherence, that it was uneven etc. That is not at all the same as "faiblement chargée". The English is linguistically correct and that expression might be used in other circumstances. However, "highly coated" is linguistically wrong, as "highly" isn't an appropriate descriptor. It's hard to explain exactly why though, as, for example, a bead could be described as "highly polished" (which might not make sense here, but would be linguistically correct).

abe(L)solano Oct 5, 2018:

That's it. But like Moira, I believe "poorly" and "heavily/highly" might convey the concept better.

MoiraB Oct 5, 2018:

@ asker Don't think slightly/strongly works. Perhaps thinly/thickly? Lightly/heavily? You can probably google it now you have "coated".

Valerie Scaletta (asker) Oct 5, 2018:

so one bead is slightly covered and another is strongly covered with the antibody?

abe(L)solano Oct 5, 2018:

In the case of microbeads I would go for "coated" or "covered" here (by Ac's). Not "loaded"; "charged" is better used when talking about electricity or ions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2569184/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259531508_Flow_Cyto...