Hacker News Reader

Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

Has he built prototype rocket engines like Integza, Ben Krasnow, or Tech Ingredients? They're still primarily divulgadores (there isn't a good word for this in English) but they have a certain amount of practical experience getting things to work.

OTOH at the point that you're EDM-drilling thousands of micron-scale holes in your combustion chamber for film cooling, you may start to need practical experience with different things.

View on HN

I've never heard the term _divulgadores_ (I don't speak Spanish, so that's no surprise), but it sounds maybe like "science communicator" in this context? There's something a bit more to the people you've listed in that they are also entertainers, not straight educators, I don't know if that's wrapped up in divulgadores as well?

It comes from the word "vulgar", meaning "common", like vulgus, the common people, for whom Jerome wrote the Vulgate (since they didn't read Greek or Hebrew). English "divulge" is a cognate, but as in many cases, the English word has experienced larger meaning shifts than Spanish. (Pidgins commonly have high rates of change.) The image I have is something like someone coming down from the ivory tower to bestow the blessings of their wisdom upon the jostling masses teeming without.

Yes, straight educators are not generally considered divulgadores; if someone is teaching a university class on linear algebra, that doesn't make them a divulgador. Unfortunately https://dle.rae.es/divulgar is not very helpful, but https://www.etymonline.com/word/divulge gives a bit of the flavor.

Hmm interesting, thank you! It sounds a bit like "vernacular design" used to kind of mean "design and manufacturing done by the common people" to meet simple needs rather than overly fancy mass-manufactured objects. "Vernacular" kind of means "the local language".

Yup!

The Italian divulgatore is translated as 'popularizer', which works pretty well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com