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07:35 Oct 12, 2011
French to English translations [PRO] Science - Livestock / Animal Husbandry
French term or phrase:matières utiles (MU)
"La race se distingue également par son efficacité dans la transformation des aliments *grossiers en matières utiles* (protéine et matière grasse)"
Later, "matières utiles" measured straight in kG (200+ kg for this cattle breed!) comes up many times as a key figure in cattle breed cards (and often on the net too), e.g.
"Matières utiles: 228 kg MG (=fat content); 204 kg MP (protein content)"
...and ie even later described as a composite of taux butyrique and taux protéineux
Can't seem to nail this one down, so many thanks for your input!
Explanation: Hope I’m not too late… I don't have any bilingual sites to back up my hunch, but it sounds like 'milk solids' to me.
See: http://www.agritech.org.nz/dairy.shtml
“More than 13 billion litres of milk are produced annually on New Zealand's 13,500 dairy farms, containing 1.1 billion kilograms of milk solids (protein and fat).
The export production comes from 3.5 million cows, in an average herd size of 250 cows, which are producing on average 3,700 litres in a milking season of up to 300 days, containing 315kgs of milk solids (about 180kgs of milk fat and 135kgs of protein).”
The yield of milk and its chemical composition strongly influence the profitability of dairy farming.
Farmers are paid for market milk by volume, provided the milk meets minimum standards of composition-not less than 3.2 per cent fat and 11.75 per cent total solids, on a weight to weight basis. There is no minimum requirement for levels of solids-not-fat or protein. Manufacturing milk is bought on its yield of fat and protein.
Milk composition
Milk from Friesian-Holstein cattle typically contains 87.5 per cent water and 12.5 per cent total solids. The ranges in composition of milk solids are: fat, 3.2 to 4.6 per cent; protein, 2.8 to 3.5 per cent; lactose, 4.2 to 4.8 per cent and minerals 0.6 to 0.8 per cent.”
Well, since you’re asking… I’m thinking ‘good hearty breakfast after a couple of hours on the farm’ :-) No, seriously, I’m thinking that this basically means that this particular breed has a good track record of producing good-quality milk when fed with unsophisticated fodder such as hay. ‘Aliments grossiers’ would be hay rather than expensive stuff like cattle cake or ground barley. So, as I understand it, it’s not the milk solids that are convertible or transformable; it’s the fodder. To me, "transformation des aliments grossiers EN matières utiles" means transformation of roughage into milk solids. HTH.
Flo's on the right track. I can't really use just "fat and protein yield" because fat and protein are just two of the matières utiles (they also count "taux azotés"). For the minute i'm thinking "convertible/transformable milk solids". What are *you* thinking? ;-)
Dry matter is what the cows eat. From the context, I'd say that the 'aliments grossiers' are the dry matter (e.g. hay): "la transformation des aliments *grossiers en matières utiles* (protéine et matière grasse)". Google 'dry matter intake' or 'dry matter rations' + dairy.
Note that 1) we're talking about milk (yields), and 2) matières utiles 'breaks down into protein content, fat content AND NITROGEN content, and the way this doc is put together I'm going to need to nail down "matières utilies" as a separate term.
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Answers
25 mins confidence:
valuable materials
Explanation: Not sure about this one. The term "valuable materials" seems to be used mainly in waste recycling, but it also occurs frequently (and makes sense) in terms of animal feed.
Explanation: Hope I’m not too late… I don't have any bilingual sites to back up my hunch, but it sounds like 'milk solids' to me.
See: http://www.agritech.org.nz/dairy.shtml
“More than 13 billion litres of milk are produced annually on New Zealand's 13,500 dairy farms, containing 1.1 billion kilograms of milk solids (protein and fat).
The export production comes from 3.5 million cows, in an average herd size of 250 cows, which are producing on average 3,700 litres in a milking season of up to 300 days, containing 315kgs of milk solids (about 180kgs of milk fat and 135kgs of protein).”
The yield of milk and its chemical composition strongly influence the profitability of dairy farming.
Farmers are paid for market milk by volume, provided the milk meets minimum standards of composition-not less than 3.2 per cent fat and 11.75 per cent total solids, on a weight to weight basis. There is no minimum requirement for levels of solids-not-fat or protein. Manufacturing milk is bought on its yield of fat and protein.
Milk composition
Milk from Friesian-Holstein cattle typically contains 87.5 per cent water and 12.5 per cent total solids. The ranges in composition of milk solids are: fat, 3.2 to 4.6 per cent; protein, 2.8 to 3.5 per cent; lactose, 4.2 to 4.8 per cent and minerals 0.6 to 0.8 per cent.”
Reference information: The heritability of FAT AND PROTEIN YIELD increased with the production level (0.31, 0.33 and 0.42).
L’héritabilité de la QUANTITÉ MOYENNE DE MATIÈRE UTILE augmente avec le niveau de production ( http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1297-9686-14-4-441....
However, the English is in the résumé of an article in French ...
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 1 hr (2011-10-12 08:42:44 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Tunisian English uses "fat and protein" and "useful matter" in the middle of page 27 here:
Spaniards too say "useful matter" in their E-L technical papers, though they define it:
dx.doi.org/10.3168/jds.2009-2787
This value is expressed as Euros (€) per hectograde of (milk) dry USEFUL MATTER (i.e., the SUM OF FAT AND PROTEIN CONTENTS expressed as percentages and ...
Here we have Kiwis: www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?...
Milking must be complete, to optimise the USEFUL MATTER in the milk. However, there is a residual rate of 15 to 20%. • Milking conditions must be clean: ...
However, NZDL is not "NZ Dairies Ltd" (which exists) but the NZ Digital Library, so the text could come from anywhere, I suppose.
This suggests that it's a French thing:
1. www.biomedcentral.com/.../1297-9686-19-4-475... - Translate this page
by B BONAÏTI - Cited by 1 - Related articles
for the THREE VARIABLES USED IN FRENCH EVALUATION : USEFUL MATTER yield (MMU) or content (MTX) and milk yield. Due to the limited size of the Canadian data set,
xxxBourth France Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 94
Note to reference poster
Asker: Would be perfect Bourth but they also later cite *taux azotés* among the "matières utiles" in a table with a column headed "MU" and under MU are listed MP (matières protéiques), MG (matières grasses) and MA (Matières azotés)... I've had a good trawl around but...
I'm thinking "transformable (milk) solids" or something along those lines?
Cheers for all your input - I see you're a ProZ bigwig now ;-)
Asker: I actually agree it should be "protein and fat yield" or "percent protein and fat", especially for ProZ glossary, but as distinction is made in this specific doc, i ran with milk solids. Had they not also cited nitrogen content, I'd've definitely gone with "protein and fat content" and wouldn't even have bothered teh ProZ community for input ;-)
Cheers for the help and enjoy the rugby this weekend!
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +1
