Welding technology

La zone affectée thermiquement is a heat-affected zone, and the two names are built by opposite machines. English loads everything in front of the head noun and makes the reader wait: « heat », then « affected », and only at the end « zone ». French cannot do that. It states the head first and unrolls the rest behind it, hanging each piece on de or, here, on an adverb — affectée thermiquement, a participle with thermiquement trailing after it, where English welds two words together with a hyphen and calls it an adjective. The whole of this list is put together that way. Le gaz de protection is « shielding gas », le métal d’apport is « filler metal », la passe de racine is « root run », le mode opératoire de soudage is « welding procedure specification », and le contrôle par ultrasons is « ultrasonic testing ». Read the French from left to right and you know at once what kind of thing is being named; read the English and you do not know what you are looking at until the last word arrives.