Glossary entry

English term or phrase:

protection profile of sb towards

English answer:

protection of X against / (current) protective measures for X against

Added to glossary by Charles Davis
Sep 14, 2013 20:03
10 yrs ago
English term

protection profile of sb towards

English Other Linguistics
Last week I translated a study about the personal protective equipment used by xxxxx to prevent occupational exposure to hepatitis B. The study interviewed a group of xxxxx and asked them what they used (gloves, goggles, white coat, surgical cap, etc.). The author named the study "protection profile of xxxx towards occupational exposure to hep B." This title does not sound right to me, so I googled in quotes:

protection profile of physicians towards
protection profile of surgeons towards
protection profile of dentists towards
protection profile of nurses towards
protection profile of health care practitioners towards
protection profile of health care professionals towards
protection profile of health care workers towards
protection profile of workers towards
protection profile of students towards
etc

and found not a single instance of any of those phrases. I would like to know from native English speakers if the phrase "protection profile of xxxx towards" sounds right to you and if not, what do you suggest? Also, if it is indeed wrong, can you explain why? Thanks very much.
Change log

Sep 16, 2013 10:11: Charles Davis Created KOG entry

Discussion

Luiza Modesto (asker) Sep 15, 2013:
I tried all sorts of combinations using the words protection, profile, against/from/regarding and nothing works. With almost two billion web pages in English, a correct short phrase must have been written somewhere by an educated native English speaker. I also changed the wording, for example, "profile regarding protection against/from" and that doesn't work either. I found similar studies with completely different titles, such as "Operator shielding: how and why" or "Circumstances surrounding occupational blood exposure events in the National Study...". There must be a reason for avoiding "protection profile" and Charles might have nailed it.

Responses

54 mins
Selected

protection of X against

No, it doesn't sound right to me. The first thing that must be changed is the preposition. You can't protect someone "towards" something; it has to be "against" or "from". Here "against" is the natural option.

I am also very doubtful about "protection profile". This is actually a technical term in computer security, which is already a reason not to use it here; but apart from this, the structure doesn't really work, I think largely because the issue is protection against something, not a profile against something. I don't think anything important is lost if you simply cut "profile" and say "protection of X against...". If you want to be more specific, you might say "state of protection of X against...".

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Note added at 2 hrs (2013-09-14 22:39:04 GMT)
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Let me develop my comments on "protection profile" a little. In principle this should be acceptable in itself as a way of referring to how someone is protected. However, applying the test you used, searching for instances of the expression, "protection profile of workers/doctors/students" (I haven't tried them all), even without "towards", you just don't find any. There is no law against using a sequence of words that Google can't find on the Internet, but in this case I think it confirms my feeling that "protection profile" is just not a natural way of expressing this idea. You can refer, for example, to the safety profile of something, meaning how safe it is (and in what ways), but "protection profile of X", meaning how and how well X is protected, doesn't work (in my opinion), because "profile" tends to refer to attributes of something.

This is apart from the other point I mentioned: that "protection profile of X against Y" suggests that the profile is against Y, whereas in fact it is the profile of protecton against Y; the conceptual structure has been distorted.

Tony's idea of "protection profile for X against Y" raise a different problem I think: it means, or certainly could mean, a set of recommendations on how X could or should be protected against Y, but as I understand it the subject is how X is in fact protected.

I still think that "protection" alone would provide a suitable title for the content you've described, but if something more really is needed, then apart from "state of protection" you might consider something like"current protective measures for X" (adding "current" would obviate the prescriptive/descriptive confusion).
Peer comment(s):

neutral Tony M : I do think 'protection profile' is important, Charles, though I agree this is not perhaps the best way of expressing it. One might say it is more 'risk profile'...
10 mins
I'm still not convinced that anything needs to be added to "protection", and if it does, I really don't think "profile" is the right word. I thought about "for", but that creates confusion: is this descriptive or prescriptive?
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thank you all very much for your help. "
1 hr

not 'wrong', but perhaps slightly unusual phrasing

To start with, I'd expect to see 'protection' associated with 'against' rather than 'towards', which may be part of what strikes you as wrong here.

Also, the use of 'protection profile of...' is slightly stilted; this use of 'of' tends to be something that betrays a non-native speaker of EN, although it is also a construction found in more formal writing too.

Were I writing this, I would probably more naturally have written 'protection profile for XXX against...'
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12 hrs

protection profile ... regarding

I agree with both of the other two suggestions that you can't use "protection towards" in English, and that it must be "protection against". But Tony's remark that "protection profile" may be important made me think that this is about a whole range of protective measures (i.e. a protection "profile), in which case this is how I'd phrase it.
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15 hrs

Protection requirements for sb

Could "protection requirements" be another option? This term seems to be used in the contexts of occupational safety and health:

1. http://1.usa.gov/1eeDts2: Respiratory protection requirements for hospital staff decontaminating chemically contaminated patients.
2. http://bit.ly/15uEc3v: Fall protection requirements for employees on construction equipment
3. http://bit.ly/18o3YZx: Compliance with the radiation protection requirements for workers in...
4. http://bit.ly/184Oype: Directive 2004/40/EC1 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the exposure of workers to the risks arising from physical agents (electromagnetic fields) seeks to introduce, at Community level,
minimum protection requirements for workers when they are exposed, in the course of their work, to risks arising from electromagnetic fields.
Example sentence:

Occupational Exposures to Hepatitis B: Protection Requirements for Physicians

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