Jet stream

[Nick Beale]

To me, jet stream seems a perfectly reasonable translation of Strahlströmung. Stream and Strom obviously have a common ancestry.

Strahl was used by the Germans in connection with jet aircraft but is also the word for a ray or beam. Sonnenstrahl is a sunbeam, for example.

Lots of words have many possible translations and (unlike language exams at school) I think it’s less about one right answer than finding something that fits the context and intention of the original. AFAIK the jetstream flows in a direction rather than radiates all round, and in English a jet is directional (e.g. a jet of water).

So while “radiant flow” could be a legitimate dictionary translation of Strahlströmung it doesn’t seem to fit what’s being described in this case.