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ambientes con lujo sin exceso
área físico-ambiental
Jun 16, 2018 03:05
6 yrs ago
27 viewers *
Spanish term

teléfono fijo (por enchufe)

Spanish to English Tech/Engineering Telecom(munications)
Estoy traduciendo una planilla del sistema nacional de ingreso a la educación universitaria en Venezuela. Incluye los datos del estudiante, información sobre sus condiciones socio-económicas, así como las opciones de las carreras que desearía estudiar y las universidades donde desearía estudiarlas.

"Número de ambientes o espacios de la vivenda
Más de cuatro

Servicios con los que cuenta la vivienda
Electricidad, Agua, Red de cloacas, **teléfono fijo (por enchufe)**, Gas bombona, Aseo urbano, Internet fijo o móvil, TV conexión por
cable o satélite

Encontré esta definición en un cuestionario del censo en Venezuela:

Teléfono fijo (por enchufe): Se refiere a la disponibilidad del servicio de telefonía básica tradicional en el hogar empadronado. No está conectado a línea telefónica alguna sino a la energía eléctrica. Este tipo de teléfono no permite la conexión para internet.

Teléfono fijo sé que es landline phone. ¿Alguien sabe cómo traducir lo de "por enchufe"?

Mil gracias por adelantado
Proposed translations (English)
4 +3 landline (plug-in)

Discussion

Charles Davis Jun 17, 2018:
@Helena Yes, I know how meticulous you are about researching source terms, and I know the frustration of wasting time on what turns out to be a typo.

Here I haven't agreed with "plug-in" because whatever the distinction is I feel that in principle this translation doesn't express it; a "teléfono fijo por línea" is also necessarily "plug-in". If I were forced to come up with a translation, since we know for certain that the "enchufe" referred to is an electrical socket, I think I might put something like "landline (power line plug-in)" or even leave out "plug-in". However this thing works, that much is definitely true.
Helena Chavarria Jun 17, 2018:
@Charles I also spent time on this question when it first appeared, and I have been following the discussion. It wasn't until today that I decided that we needed an answer, so I agreed with the literal translation.

Sometimes I wonder if people appreciate the amount of time we spend trying to find the perfect translation! Yesterday I spent an hour trying to find the translation of 'lijares' and 'caderas' in a volcanic area, only to discover this morning that it should really be 'lajiales' and 'calderas'!
Charles Davis Jun 17, 2018:
That may well be all we can do here. On that level, it's a no-brainer, frankly: "por enchufe" literally translates as "plug-in". Except that "teléfonos fijos por línea" also plug in, to a different socket. But I do think the problem at least needs to be acknowledged; what sort of phone it is is what the question's all about. A great deal of effort has been expended here on trying to work it out, by people who have refrained from posting an answer because they weren't sure what the source term really means. Marie made a suggestion which I think is probably right.
Helena Chavarria Jun 17, 2018:
@Charles I've seen that the definition comes from an official source. I really don't know what kind of phone it refers to but, unless someone manages to find a translation, I think that I would translate it literally: landline (plug-in).
Charles Davis Jun 17, 2018:
@Helena But the definition clearly states what sort of plug/socket it is: "No está conectado a línea telefónica alguna sino a la energía eléctrica". This definition is written by someone in an official position, who clearly knows the difference between a telephone socket and a mains socket. And the fact remains that the definition clearly states that this sort of landline is not connected to a telephone line. That's what we've all been racking our brains about in the discussion: what's the difference between "por enchufe" and "por línea"? It can't just be a matter of an old versus a new type of receiver. It's a landline phone plugged into the electrical mains in places where there are no telephone lines. I can't see any possible way round that.
Helena Chavarria Jun 17, 2018:
@Charles 'por enchufe' in the question doesn't specify what sort of plug/socket it is. In the definition given in the questionnaire, the person might have presumed that all sockets are electrical sockets.

I can't remember where the phone was plugged into when I was small, though I remember when we got a new one with a curly wire!
Charles Davis Jun 17, 2018:
@Helena But those old phones were "por línea", weren't they? They didn't plug into the mains, as I recall.
Helena Chavarria Jun 17, 2018:
@Neil The link didn't fit in the agree box!

http://www.lightstraw.co.uk/ate/main/std/index.html
Marie Wilson Jun 17, 2018:
Flaw in the logic This term comes from one source, which distinguishes between "por enchufe/por linea":
Los últimos indicadores considerados en esta faceta de la vulnerabilidad corresponden a la no disponibilidad de recursos y/o herramientas como el radio, la televisión, el teléfono fijo por enchufe o el teléfono fijo por línea en los hogares.
La vulnerabilidad es un fenómeno multidimensional y ... - Saber UCV
saber.ucv.ve/ojs/index.php/rev_terr/article/download/.../14123

You can't really simplify this and say "landline or landline".
Charles Davis Jun 17, 2018:
Yes But what about "por enchufe"?
Christian [email protected] Jun 17, 2018:
plain ol' landline... no need to complicate things
Marie Wilson Jun 16, 2018:
@ Charles I does sound like it, and I think the same telecom company operates in Venezuela.
Charles Davis Jun 16, 2018:
@Marie It sounds as though this is similar to what you had, after all.
Yvonne Becker (asker) Jun 16, 2018:
Conociendo al país, diría que probablemente no es ninguna tecnología sofisticada, sino una mala redacción o mala definición. La definición como tal la saqué de un cuestionario de un censo; no aparece en la planilla que debo traducir
Marie Wilson Jun 16, 2018:
@ Charles I think the TRAC came about because the then state telephone company had the obligation of providing everybody with a phone line, I don't know the situation in Venezuela, but maybe it is similar. My phone only worked when there was electricity and stopped working during power cuts. They never worked for internet, only in theory.
Charles Davis Jun 16, 2018:
@Marie Yes, it does. I'd forgotten about that. Maybe it just means you need another device for Internet. Though the same point applies to TRAC in Spain, which must be what you had: in principle, since it uses the mobile network, you can have Internet via a modem (and you could even with the old analogue ones, apparently). So I still don't know what this is.
Marie Wilson Jun 16, 2018:
@ Charles But doesn't it say ""Este tipo de teléfono no permite la conexión para internet"?
Charles Davis Jun 16, 2018:
landline telephone by power line? I'm leaning towards suggesting this, but I haven't got the evidence to show that it's been implemented on a wide scale in Venezuela. However, PLC technology is certainly known. This is from a Trabajo Especial de Grado in Electrical Engineering at the Universidad Central de Venezuela quite a while ago (in 2006):

"La tecnología PLC (Power Line Communications), permite transmitir información a través de la infraestructura eléctrica ya existente, convirtiendo los enchufes convencionales en puntos de conexión para servicios de telecomunicaciones (Internet de alta velocidad, telefonía,)."
http://saber.ucv.ve/bitstream/123456789/13018/1/TEG-Fernánde... , p. 17 (p. 33 of file)
Charles Davis Jun 16, 2018:
VoIP? What you can do is use BPL for VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol), giving you an Internet phone service carried by power lines. This company, PLC de Venezuela, seems to be doing it (PLC stands for Power Line Carrier):
http://www2.plc.com.ve:1003/productos.html
Charles Davis Jun 16, 2018:
Telephony over power lines? The first thought that came to my mind was a telephone equivalent of broadband over power lines (BPL), an important application of power-line communication: carrying data on a conductor that is also used for electrical power transmission. BPL is quite mainstream:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication

Carrier-wave telephony over power lines, the use of power lines for voice communication, is by no means a new idea: it was first implemented experimentally in 1918, using the carrier-wave frequency technique demonstrated in 1910-11, and systems were introduced in the US and elsewhere in the 1920s. You can read about it here:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4510271

However, I'm by no means convinced this is what they mean here. Marie's suggestion sounds more likely.
franglish Jun 16, 2018:
with Marie, it's a landline
Marie Wilson Jun 16, 2018:
This sounds like the phones you used to get in Spain in areas with no telephone lines. I had one for years, it had to be plugged in at all times and had an aerial. Was a landline but worked like a mobile.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefonía_Rural_por_Acceso_Cel...
Florencio Alonso Jun 16, 2018:
No solo no sé traducirlo, sino que ni siquiera entiendo la tecnología. Si el teléfono no está conectado a una red telefónica sino a la energía básica, ¿cómo logra comunicarse con algo si del otro lado está la subestación eléctrica? No entiendo el sentido de esto realmente, salvo que no esté comprendiendo el texto en sí.

Proposed translations

+3
7 hrs
Selected

landline (plug-in)

A landline is a fixed phone that plugs into the wall, like most users had before mobiles/cellphones were invented.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 7 hrs (2018-06-16 10:59:18 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

In areas with no telephone line infrastructure, sometimes satellite phones are used, but the definition in the discussion seemes to refer to communication via power lines. AFAIK, only internet is sent by this method in Spain, and I don't know if the technology would also work for voice communication. But a "telefono fijo" is a landline.
Reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landline

https://bizfluent.com/about-5501487-landline-phones-vs-cell-phones.html

Peer comment(s):
agree Francois Boye
18 mins
agree Christian [email protected]
15 hrs
agree Helena Chavarria : Maybe it's something like this one: http://www.aegtelephones.eu/documents/AEG_Voxtel_D550BT_UK.p...
22 hrs
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Selected automatically based on peer agreement."
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