Good people, I need help in translation

[Sarethion]

Hello!

I have a very stupid question, but... We're writing a paper on potential health benefits of drinking alcohol and there is this one sentence that we need translated to English, but we just can't find a reasonable way to do it ourselves. Could any native speaker or someone who's really good at English help me out?

For obvious reasons, I won't post the sentence in my native language, but here's the rough description of what it is supposed to say:

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Ok, so we have a table that shows how much of the various types of alcohol an average person has drunk during a year. The catch is that the amount of the alcohol that was drunk is not measured in the grams of that alcohol type (i.e. an average person consumed 100 l of beer and 50 l of wine during a year) but in the 100% alcohol equivalent (i.e. an average person consumed the amount of beer equal to drinking 20 l of 100% ethanol and the amount of wine equal to 5 l of 100% ethanol).

The whole idea is to have one sentence that describes what is in that table. For example:

The structure of consumption of various types of alcohol, but not measured in the grams of the alcohol consumed but in the equivalent amount of 100% ethanol. - or - Yearly consumption of various types of alcohol measured in the amount of 100% alcohol.

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Could anyone help me write a sentence like that? The sentence has to be in formal English as the paper is meant to go to a science magazine.

UPDATE: sorry, I screwed up, the values in the table are not in grams but liters.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. Sorry for a mistake in the title, I don't know why I put "in" instead of "with"

P.S. Also, I'm sorry if I put it in the wrong place, but... I figured that while there are forums dedicated to that type of stuff, since I'm already frequenting this one and it's only one sentence, I might as well ask here.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Assuming this is a label for the table, how about something like this:

The average annual alcohol consumption by a person as its weight-equivalent of pure ethanol, broken down into types of alcoholic drink.

[Independent voter]

The structure of consumption of various types of alcohol, but not measured in the grams of the alcohol consumed but in the equivalent amount of 100% ethanol. - or - Yearly consumption of various types of alcohol measured in the amount of 100% alcohol.

I'm sure someone who's a better writer will come along shortly but I can't pass up a challenge.

The alcohol consumption is based on the equivalent amount of 100% ethanol, not the type of alcohol consumed or the yearly amount of alcohol consumed measured in 100% ethanol regardless of type of alcohol.

(Butter Log's is better)

Seems like both sentences are repeating themselves.

[Sarethion]

The average annual alcohol consumption by a person as its weight-equivalent of pure ethanol, broken down into types of alcoholic drink.

Thank you very much, kind sir! It sounds just like the thing I was looking for!
If there's anything I could do for you in the future, I'll be happy to!

@Hubcap - it's a label for the table, it needs to be as condensed and formal as possible

EDIT:

I've made Butler's idea a bit shorter, is it okay?

Yearly consumption of various types of alcoholic beverages as their weight-equivalent of pure ethanol.

[Deleted]

Should you not be converting to ABV for the different drinks anyway? and perhaps plotting the quantity and ABV product? This would make it far neater to mark on the chart. And if you feel you need to you can explain what ABV is elsewhere in the text or just take it that the reader can look up the standard.

[Sarethion]

Should you not be converting to ABV for the different drinks anyway? and perhaps plotting the quantity and ABV product? This would make it far neater to mark on the chart. And if you feel you need to you can explain what ABV is elsewhere in the text of just take it that the reader can look up the standard.

The thing is, the whole text of the article is in my native language (polish). We only need a summary and labels of tables to be translated in order to have the publisher accept it Also, as far as I know, average consumption of alcohol is often measured in the 100% ethanol equivalent

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Annual consumption of various types of alcoholic beverages measured according to alcohol by volume.

It isn't in alcohol by volume. It is by weight equivalent of pure ethanol. So a 1 litre bottle of 12% alcohol wine would contain 120ml of alcohol, which is 94.7 grams of ethanol. (1 ml of ethanol weighs 0.789 grams)

[soulzek]

There are mental benefits to alcohol, but physiologically, there are none. It is a toxic substance.

[Sarethion]

Do you have a picture or some visual representation?

Yep, but the table itself is in Polish (btw, it's kinda weird that we have to translate the label, but not the table itself, but hell... less work for us), so I guess showing it to you wouldn't really help you understand what I mean. I'll just do a translated, simplified example (with random numbers):

Year - beer consumed - wine consumed
2000 - 5 g - 2 g
2005 - 10g - 3 g

The whole point is that values in this tables are not the weight of beer or wine, but the weight of pure ethanol contained in the amount consumed.

- - - Updated - - -

There are mental benefits to alcohol, but physiologically, there are none. It is a toxic substance.

Fun fact time! For example, it's helps slow down dementia and the progress of cardiovasular diseases

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Fun fact time! For example, it's helps slow down dementia and the progress of cardiovasular diseases

The tannins in red wine act as anti-oxidants, which reduce the risk of cancer.

[Deleted]

Yes but the approach to do it by weight for standardising the descriptions of drinks is more of a US thing I belive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoho...ohol_by_weight). I am pretty sure all of the EU uses ABV for instance.

My point was more that is you have the ABV and you have the volume consumed, then the product of those two numbers gives you an indication of the ethanol equivalent. So you would then just plot this against the sample size and you could in e.g. a bar graph just have each datum read Beer (ABV 4%).

Either way. The graph should probably just be for example "Ethanol Equivalent by Beverage". And you should detail outside of the graph how you calculated that.

[Sarethion]

Funny, I remember we were talking about writing about cancer as well, but while there were some rumors, the study results on the topic were inconclusive as things like breast cancer seemed to be triggered by the alcohol consumption.

On a side note, I think I'll settle for this:
Consumption of various types of alcoholic beverages as their equivalent of pure ethanol.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes but the approach to do it by weight for standardising the descriptions of drinks is more of a US thing I belive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoho...ohol_by_weight). I am pretty sure all of the EU uses ABV for instance

Wait... let me double check to be sure, I didn't write the paragraph the TABLE (not graph) is in and I finished my part of the paper first, while the table still contained values in grams.

Oh, you're right. One of my collegues must have changed it and it's in liters of pure ethanol now.

Damn, sorry for the confusion, my bad for not checking if there were any updates on that front

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Still, the table contains units the values are measured in, so this:

Consumption of various types of alcoholic beverages as their equivalent of pure ethanol.

Should be fine?

[Ripster42]

People usually refer to it as drinks per (time period). They'd usually convert it into the amount of alcohol in one drink and then report it as 2.3 drinks per day or something like that.

[Sarethion]

People usually refer to it as drinks per (time period). They'd usually convert it into the amount of alcohol in one drink and then report it as 2.3 drinks per day or something like that.

Maybe, but we want to present the total consumption of certain types of alcohol during a year

P.S. It's kinda funny that you're forum title is brewmaster and we're talking about alcohol

[Ripster42]

Maybe, but we want to present the total consumption of certain types of alcohol during a year

P.S. It's kinda funny that you're forum title is brewmaster and we're talking about alcohol

Ya, like 12oz of beer is about the equivalent to a 2oz shot or 5oz of wine. Yes, we use stupid units of measurement.

Edit: The upshot being that you'd refer to that amount of alcohol by type as a "drink" and then do conversions for drink. Drink=one beer, one glass of wine, one hard alcohol shot (80proof).