ATA Science & Technology Division

AtA Annual Conference Review, ST-10 Technical Writing for Into-English Translators

2012-01-16T10:02:00.000-08:00

We know from Karen Tkaczyk's blog posts that one of her goals for 2011 was to improve her writing and editing skills[1] -- but little did we know that she intended to improve ours as well!

Karen is a French-into-English technical translator specializing in chemistry (industrial applications and IP) and related life sciences. Through her company, McMillan Translation[2], she also offers services in scientific and technical writing, copyediting, and localization from US to UK English.

Plus, she is an engaging presenter. She held sway over the packed room, clearly comfortable with her material, and emphasized her points with humor and uncluttered slides. Here's my favorite:

(Hint: Consider charging by the source word or setting a project fee.)

Karen first described the function of effective technical writing: it transmits technical information objectively and accurately, keeping the needs of the user in mind. She then reviewed the characteristics of effective technical writing -- brevity, clarity, and precision -- and gave us before-and-after examples for each principle.

She listed strategies for writing effectively, including the following:

· Avoid long sentences (keep sentences under 21 words)

· Reorder thoughts for logical flow

· Prefer active verbs (watch out for forms of to be, which may indicate passive voice and noun-heavy constructions)

· Substitute phrases with single words (at the present time → now; in spite of the fact that → although; a number of → several)

These are writing and editing strategies, but translators can use them when translating technical documents. Karen pointed out, however, that in order to meet the requirements of our translation clients, technical translators must sometimes sacrifice brevity, clarity, or precision. We may have to curb our inner technical writer or editor when the translation must mirror the ambiguities of the original (for instance, patent translations or documents translated for use in litigation). Even when translators have some leeway to "improve" the text in translation, we don't always have access to the author and may not be able to confirm wording that we think clarifies the meaning.

Karen also highlighted specific linguistic challenges, reminding us that technical translators may face different carryover problems depending on language pair and direction. She used the example of logical ordering of events. English readers prefer sequential order from start to finish, while readers of other languages may be accustomed to having the result of an action presented first, followed by an explanation of the process in reverse order. Or they may be used to a more nested syntactic structure.

Karen observed that when translators work outside their core subject areas, they tend to write literally. She recommended an excellent strategy for crafting idiomatic language when writing about technical subjects: to find an analogy that we are comfortable with from everyday life.

As shown in this slide, cooking instructions may provide useful sentence patterns for explaining chemistry procedures. For user manuals, try substituting an analogous but simplified or generic noun to help you focus on the functions of the device in question or the actions required to handle such an object (think oven for autoclave, or webcam for bi-directional real-time audio-visual transmission device). As a medical translator with a background in theater, I think of surgical procedures in terms of scenery and prop construction. How do you repair body parts or stabilize internal structures? Well, you can choose from staples, welds, nails, screws, bolts, cotter pins, glue, tape, wire, and (of course) needle and thread. Each can serve as a familiar stand-in for a method of surgical fixation.

Karen also reminded us that units of measure differ between languages and locales, as do notation styles -- spaces between the numeral and unit of measure, capitalization, and punctuation. (I was able to use one example from her slides immediately, changing the style of the abbreviation for milliliter from the European ml to the American mL.)

Clients assume that we, as technical translators, have subject matter expertise, technical know-how, strong terminology research skills, and a command of the basics (the rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation in the target language). But beyond writing skills, we must also be familiar with and willing to follow the often arbitrary rules imposed by the target market -- these may be codified by the dominant professional organization of a certain country, by the industry-appointed style guide, or even by a particular publication.

Karen encouraged us to pick a style guide and use it for all assignments in which the style is not specified. Ideally, this would be one of the standard references for the field (for example, AMA style for the medical field). She suggested that when we use the same rules again and again, these rules become second nature.

The session handout contained a long list of style guides (general and technical), books, blogs, websites, and training programs. This will soon be available on the Science and Technology Division website, and division members are encouraged to suggest additions from their own fields and languages.

Karen gave an enjoyable and educational session. I hope she will offer similar sessions again, and if she does, be sure to attend.

[1] http://ata-sci-tech.blogspot.com/2011/06/branching-out-from-translation-events.html

[2] http://www.mcmillantranslation.com

Paula Gordon translates from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian into English, with a focus on medical records, journal articles, and clinical trial documentation. She also works as a copyeditor and proofreader, and her clients include the quarterly journal Biotechnology Healthcare (MediMedia USA) and the monthly magazine Health Affairs (Project HOPE). She edited the Serbian and Croatian into English Medical Dictionary by Svetolik Paul Djordjević (Jordana Publishing, 2009), and is currently editing an English into Serbian medical dictionary by the same author. For more information, visit www.dbaPlanB.com and www.jordanapublishing.com.

2011 in Review

2012-01-12T07:49:00.000-08:00

As people renewed their ATA memberships atthe end of 2010 our division reached 1000 members. By the end of the year itwas about 1500.

The beginning of the year was marked byfinding Distinguished Speakers and encouraging people to present for theS&TD track at the Boston annual conference. Another winter event was S&TDbeing selected as one of the model divisions who would implement the new LeadershipCouncil system. After asking for volunteers, we formed a Leadership Councilwith ten members in February 2011. Administrator Karen Tkaczyk reported on theprocess and how it had been received at the Division Administrators’ Summit heldin Alexandria, VA, in April. That summit was a great opportunity to learn bestpractices from other division administrators.

We found two distinguished speakers, one ofwhom was a Boston local, and one of whom was from Switzerland but whoseemployee (CERN) helped cover expenses. The effort to find them and severalreminders and requests through the group’s networking avenues led to 14one-hour S&TD session proposals for the Boston conference. The track wasset at a full slate of 12 sessions by early June, and preparations began forsocial events. One was a social outing to the Boston Museum of Science for theWednesday afternoon prior to the conference, and the other was a divisiondinner. Alicja Yarborough arranged both those events.

A Nominating Committee was formed, andhandled the election of Administrator and Assistant Administrator. Thanks go tochair Abigail Dahlberg and members Susanna Weerth and Salvador Virgen. Thecurrent Administrator and Assistant Administrator Steven Marzuola both ran, andwe received no other nominations. We elected them by acclamation to servetwo-year terms 2011-2013.

The leadership sought member opinions ongoals, activities and communication methods in a summer 2011 survey. Theanalysis was published to division members.

Then it was time for the conference. We had11 sessions in the S&TD track, after one speaker pulled out due to illhealth. The biggest problem we had was good one: the room we were allocated wasfull to bursting for several sessions, so we had higher attendance thanS&TD sessions received in recent years. The two distinguished speakerspulled in good crowds and appeared to please attendees. So did the outing tothe Boston Museum of Science and the off-site division dinner, attended by 30people. Seven members of the Leadership Council were present in Boston. Allseven attended the dinner and AGM, and four gave presentations, so we set agood example in volunteering and supporting division efforts. We added a paneldiscussion to the division’s AGM, which members received well. We tweeted fromthe conference and provided news updates on the networking sites for membersnot attending. Reviews and photos are up on the blog and website.

After discussion throughout the year on howto improve the division’s website, work began in earnest in the fall when IrynaAshby dove in to the job with gusto. In early December we were able to take anew site live, and we were very pleased with it. We intend to update it atleast monthly with brief news updates to keep content dynamic, and to add tothe resources available and division records as events occur.

Throughout the year the blog, email groupand LinkedIn group were all active, with the mailing list having the highestnumber of active contributors. Steven Marzuola moderated the mailing list andKaren Tkaczyk handled the LinkedIn group and newly opened Twitter account. Theblog had a number of great articles posted and gained a second editor, TessWhitty, to help split the workload with founding editor, Stephanie Strobel. Wewere pleased with an increasing number of division members showing interest inwriting. Topics ranged from photonics to the value of ATA certification, fromsoftware localization to marble runs. From the conference, we tweeted toprovide those who weren’t there and those who were with some tidbits. There wasalso some news updates posted by email and on LinkedIn for members notattending.

After huge growth as we started up in 2010,and major progress on the conference track and website during 2011, we simplyhope to continue on this path during 2012. If we have a blog that continues toserve up stimulating content and an appealing set of sessions and site tour inSan Diego, it will be a successful year.

Karen Tkaczyk, Administrator

ATA Annual Conference Sci-Tech Division, Panel Discussion on Technical Translation and Localization

2011-12-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

By Susanna Weerth

Catherine Christaki, Tess Whitty, and Steven Marzuola (left to right) outlined the paths they each took to get into translation, and then sparked a discussion about important issues in technical translation during a Q&A session.

Steven Marzuola provided insights about how he got involved in translating for the oil and gas industry. At age 9, when he and his family lived in Venezuela, his father began taking him to visit oil rigs. Steven later worked in oil industry for about 10 years, before moving back to the US in the 1991. He began working for agencies that needed Spanish – English translations in the oil and gas industry which he was able to provide due to his background in the field which provided familiarity with the techniques, equipment and terminology. Steven enjoys reading, writing about his projects, translating, and presenting about his experiences.

Tess Whitty has a background in IT, telecommunications, and marketing, and a love for languages. After receiving her degrees in international marketing and business communications, she started working as a product marketing manager for a telecommunications company in Sweden. It was not until moving to the US that she started working as a translator and established her translation business translating from English to Swedish, specializing in software localization, IT, telecommunications and business communications. She is the language chair for the new English into Swedish certification for ATA, and helped develop this certification program.

Catherine Christaki translates from English into Greek in IT, telecommunications, medical and technical areas. In cooperation with her husband, a translator with expertise in the gambling field, she also translates and edits in this field. When she started as a translator, she had no knowledge in a specific field, and she worked full-time before choosing her fields.
Varied topics were covered during the Q&A time. Here are some of the insights, grouped by subject matter.

Some types of texts in medical translation require knowledge of only basic terminology, such as patient questionnaires, and can be attempted by any good technical translator. By contrast, others, like dentistry, require extensive field-specific knowledge, so attempted translation should not be treated lightly.

Tess stated that software localization is mainly done by localization companies, using translation agencies or freelance translators for the translation part. Direct clients are rare for this subject. Catherine said that Greek is almost never a part of the first round of localization when software is developed, and strings have already been translated into other languages, like French or German. Therefore, most of the problems that might occur, like formatting issues due to expansion of the translated text, have been addressed before the source text reaches the Greek translator. Also, since a lot of translators and/or translation agencies usually take part in the localization of a software project in a specific language combination, the individual IT translator almost never gets the chance to see his/her work published. Tess stated that she never gets the finished product, but can be involved in changes during software fixes and updates. Based on her experience, it would be ideal to make the translator part of the software development team instead of sending the translation to an agency or specialized translator after development. Developing the terminology simultaneously would make it easier to discuss terms e.g. those that need to fit into the same space when translated. An onsite translator could learn the terminology, explain difficulties of term translations, and ask questions.

The main language of communication in the oil industry is English. In many countries employees work in English, but not everywhere. The example in question was Spanish in Venezuela. The nature of translation for oil and gas depends on the software, the languages, and the project. For example, if only one company or language is involved, it makes terminology easier, even though each has their own specific terms.

After some discussion, all the attendees introduced themselves. The variety of subject-matter expertise present was inspiring! It included IT, engineering, mechanical engineering, renewable and building energy, gaming, materials science, chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, nanotechnology, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and patent translation in these areas. Some also work in less technical subjects like marketing and law, and some attendees provide interpreting services as well as translation and localization services. Target languages represented were Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Polish and Spanish. A project manager from a translation company who values subject-matter expertise also attended this session. As we closed the meeting, she was surrounded by those present who were interested working for her company. This session was a haven for technical writing geeks enjoying the company of like-minded people.

Susanna Weerth works as an English – German freelance translator and interpreter. She specializes in life sciences (medical, biological and pharmaceutical), patent, and general legal translation and medical interpretation. She holds a professional certification as medical assistant and worked several years as medical technician in a physician's office and a clinical laboratory at the Veterinary University Clinics of Munich. She received a "Diplom" (MS equivalent) in Biology and a "Doktor" (PhD equivalent) in Biology/Neuroimmunology from the University of Munich and the Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, Germany. She worked in a clinical laboratory in Oncology in Germany. And after relocating to the US, she worked for several years in neuroscience research in laboratories at different universities and the National Institute of Health. She transitioned into translation by completing the "Certificate in German to English Translation" at the New York University in 2010 and started interpreting the same year with courses at Georgetown and Cross Cultural Communication. She has also taken biomedical writing and editing courses. She is currently involved at the board of the National Capitol Area Translators Association (NCATA) and the Nominating Committee of the Science & Technology Division and NCATA.

Technical Translating With Style - by Danielle Maxson

2011-12-04T12:58:00.001-08:00

Here is another review of Kevin Costellos very popular presentation at the annual ATA conference. We thought it would be interesting to get two peoples point of view of the same presentation. This review is written by Danielle Maxson.

Some people believe that technical writingis dry, verbose, self-aggrandizing, and just plain boring. These poor peoplehave never met Kevin Costello. At the recent ATA conference in Boston, Iattended a session by this translation instructor from James MadisonUniversity. His presentation, “Mind All the Gaps in Spanish-English TechnicalTranslation” showed attendees that technical translation does not have to bedry, nor does talking about it.

Kevindrew on his former work translating and editing scientific and technical papersat the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, to present his view oftechnical translation. In their work, technical translators attempt to bridgetwo “gaps” between the source and target texts, a linguistic gap and a culturalgap. Kevin believes we should be aware of a third gap between languages, adifference of writing style. Stylistic transposition, his term for applicationof stylistic editing to a translation, will help us to bridge thisoften-overlooked third gap.

Kevinfirst differentiated stylistic editing, which makes a text more readable, fromcopy editing, which brings the text into line with pre-defined rules of grammarand punctuation. He also introduced his audience to the Gunning Fog Index, aquantitative measurement of the clarity of a given text, and presented severalsentences which fell outside the ideal “fog range” of 10 to 13. He then listedseven guidelines that are particularly appropriate for stylistic editing inSpanish-English translation:

Write shorter sentences. (Spanish sentences can go on for miles. English sentences should not.)
Prefer the active voice. (Passive constructions are generally favored in Spanish technical writing. English can -- and often should -- be more direct.)
Use a personal style. (In English, "we looked up and saw" makes more sense than "upon looking up, it was seen that. . .")
Use verbs. (The structure of Spanish allows for the use of many more nouns than we are accustomed to using in English. Changing the nouns to verbs usually improves comprehensibility.)
Use consistent vocabulary. (Repetition is generally frowned upon in Spanish, so writers tend to use plenty of synonyms. In English, it is often better to pick one word and stick with it.)
Use parallel structure. (The Spanish text may say "Group 1 averaged 12 accidents, and the second group had a mean of 8." An English text, however, would use the same structure for both phrases: "Group 1 averaged 12 accidents, and Group 2 averaged 8.")
Remove redundancies. (Translating every word of a sentence in Spanish often leads to needless repetition. These repetitions can be omitted without damage to the meaning of the text.)

Applying these guidelines will make theEnglish translation stronger, shorter, more concise, more comprehensible andmore pleasant to read. Kevin provided a wealth of examples from his own work,including one memorable sentence that weighed in at a whopping 179 words. Ineach case, he applied one or more of the above rules to bring the example intoline with an English-language writing style that obviously improved the text.He even improved one abstract's Gunning Fog Index from 18.58 to 13.2.

Theaudience responded well to the presentation, although some took issue with theguidelines, particularly the second. One shrewd attendee also asked, “This isall based on charging for source word count, right?” Kevin smiled andacknowledged that stylistic transposition does tend to lower total word countsin the target document. He and the audience noted other potential problems withthis approach, including an author's reluctance to have the text corrected forstyle. The advantages, however, include stronger texts, minimized translationloss, maximized translation gain, improved readability for the audience, andgreater professional satisfaction for the translator.

IfKevin had edited this review, I imagine he would have improved upon it a greatdeal (and the word “self-aggrandizing” in the first paragraph would not appear).But while I may not have used his suggestions for this text, I have used themin my daily work with encouraging results. I will be interested to see if hepresents at the next conference in San Diego.

Danielle Maxson is a freelancePortuguese to English and Spanish to English translator. She can be reached atdmaxson@dmaxsontranslates.com.

“Mind All the Gaps in Spanish>English Technical Translation”, reviewed by Karen Tkaczyk

2011-12-01T11:28:00.001-08:00

At the end of apacked Friday at the annual conference in Boston, Kevin Costello gave us the benefit of his considerableexperience in technical translation. He is Instructor of Spanish-EnglishTranslation in the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures atJames Madison University in Virginia. His session included examples taken from workwhile at a prior position at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain. Thetitle of this entertaining session contained a cultural reference close to myheart. In the London Underground (rail subway system) the loudspeakers alwaystell us to mind the gap before we board. Kevin is British, as am I.

Kevin startedwith a little background: our need to bridge linguistic and cultural gaps andthus minimize translation loss, as is the case for all translations. He went onto describe a third stylistic gap specific to technical translation. To bridgethis stylistic gap, Kevin said we need to apply simple, powerful techniques ofstylistic editing while translating. Anyone who has spoken to me on the subjectof technical translation will be aware that I also encourage this. Hence I wasan eager attendee, excited to hear Kevin’s opinions and see his examples. Kevinsaid that if we can become "bistylistic" as well as bilingual andbicultural, we will achieve both our primary aim of minimizing translation lossand the secondary aim of maximizing translation gain.

Kevin listed characteristicsof good technical texts.

· Clear

· Simple

· Direct

· Concise

· Personal

· Communicative

He covered someof the typical problems that come from Spanish as a source language, forexample, reflexive,passive and impersonal language. He used the Gunning fogindex to score poor translations. At first this is just entertaining, but thenquickly I saw that it was an effective tool for measuring clarity, especially wherethere was none. Kevinthen described seven methods for improving texts.

· Write shorter sentences

· Prefer the active voice

· Use a personal style

· Use verbs

· Use consistent vocabulary

· Use parallel structure

· Remove redundancies

Hethen gave us helpful, clear examples of bloated, pompous, wordy texts that hehad worked on, mainly written by Spanish professors, with examples of ‘draft’,fairly literal translations and ‘edited’, optimal translations. It was clear tothe whole audience that applying these seven techniques works. This was justthe sort of insightful, well-organized, practical conference session I enjoy.

The Annual Science & Technology Division Dinner at the Indian Restaurant, Kashmir, Boston 2012

2011-11-29T17:28:00.000-08:00

By Susanna Weerth

On Thursday, October 27, at 6:15 p.m. members of ATA’s Sci-Tech division gathered in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel Copley Place to walk to an Indian restaurant, Kashmir, on Newbury Street. Alicja Yarborough, who had organized this event, awaited us there for our annual division dinner. It was a short walk from the hotel past Boston's brownstone houses in cold rainy weather. We were happy to be welcomed by Alicja at the restaurant, which had such a pleasant atmosphere. The 34 members attending were seated at tables reserved for our division in a private space.

Before the first appetizer arrived, we had some time to get to know the fellow Sci-Tech Division members at our table. As a relative new comer to translation and interpretation, I was happy to start a conversation with the three members sharing my table. We talked about our specialties, language pairs and direction, and our experience with science, technical and medical translations, as well as our experiences at this year’s conference. As it turned out, two members at my table shared my language pair, and I was pleased to hear their advice.

Appetizers arrived at the tables in bowls and copper dishes: "Vegetable Pakorah," some freshly cut vegetables, deep fried in chick-pea batter and "Sheek kebab," pieces of Tandoori baked minced lamb seasoned with chopped onions, chopped bell peppers, herbs and spices, served with three kinds of different chutney and Indian "Naan" bread. The red chutney was so hot that some members ordered “Lassi”, a traditional yoghurt-based drink of India, to quench the heat of the spicy food.

Before the main courses arrived the Division Administrator, Karen Tkaczyk, introduced herself and gave a little speech. She thanked Alicja Yarborough for organizing the museum visit and the dinner. Karen then introduced the other founding members of the “new” Sci-Tech, Assistant Administrator Steven Marzuola, and Stephanie Strobel. Karen welcomed Nicolas Hartman, the outgoing ATA president and enthusiastic member of the Sci-Tech Division. Karen then introduced other division volunteers: members of the Leadership Council and the Nominating Committee, most of whom attended the dinner. She pointed out that this year the division was very strongly represented with 11 presentations, and she encouraged everyone to attend the Division’s Annual Meeting on Saturday from 2:30-3:30 p.m.

There was quite a variety of entrées: one called "Chicken Tikka Masala", a Tandoori style white meat chicken in a tomato cream sauce. A second, "Dal Makhani" contained lentils sautéed in butter with fresh herbs and spices, garnished with fresh coriander. Other dishes included "Shahi Aloo Gobhi," cauliflower and potatoes cooked with tomato, onion, herbs and spices, and "Kabuli Chaana," whole chick peas cooked with onions and tomatoes.

Division member Alfred Hellstern and Stephanie Strobel took photographs of the event, visiting table to table so they could catch all 34 members happily chatting and eating. Finally, a delicious desert "Galub Jamum," a dish of two deep fried wheat cake balls, soaked in syrup, completed our menu.

Along with enjoying the wonderful menu, we were happy to have met our distinguished group of colleagues and friends. We exchanged business cards to keep in touch.

It was a fabulous event, and I look forward to meeting even more division members at the Sci-Tech Division dinner during next year’s ATA Annual Conference in San Diego.

Susanna Weerth works as an English – German freelance translator and interpreter. She specializes in life sciences (medical, biological and pharmaceutical), patent, and general legal translation and medical interpretation. She holds a professional certification as medical assistant and worked several years as medical technician in a physician's office and a clinical laboratory at the Veterinary University Clinics of Munich. She received a "Diplom" (MS equivalent) in Biology and a "Doktor" (PhD equivalent) in Biology/Neuroimmunology from the University of Munich and the Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, Germany. She worked in a clinical laboratory in Oncology in Germany and after relocating to the US for several years in neuroscience research in laboratories at different universities and the National Institute of Health. She transitioned into translation by completing the "Certificate in German to English Translation" at the New York University in 2010 and started interpreting the same year with courses at Georgetown and Cross Cultural Communication. She has also taken biomedical writing and editing courses. She is currently involved at the board of the National Capitol Area Translators Association (NCATA) and the Nominating Committee of the Science & Technology Division and NCATA.

More on ‘Translating Technical Manuals’ by João Roque Dias

2011-11-17T09:27:00.000-08:00

Here is another point of view on João Roque Dias’s ATA52 conference session on translating manuals. Thank you to Evan Schapiro, Senior Project Manager at CETRA Language Solutions for reviewing the session.

http://info.cetra.com/blog/bid/48128/ATA52-The-Art-of-Translating-Manuals

Summary of Translating Technical Manuals – by João Roque Dias

2011-11-11T13:18:00.001-08:00

João is atranslator from English into European Portuguese, specializing in translationof “nuts and bolts, and everything between the bolt head and the nut”, i.e.technical manuals. He gave a presentation for ATA Science and TechnologyDivision during the ATA conference in Boston on his specialty, “TranslatingTechnical Manuals”. His definition of a technical manual is “a roadmap for theuser, the bread and butter for any technical translator. Nobody reads a manualbut everybody uses it.” He points out that, technical manuals should betranslated by technical translators with a deep knowledge of the subjectmatter, impeccable writing skills and an excellent command of the style for themanual. Unfortunately this is not always the case and some translators have noidea of what they are translating. He points out that there are different typesof technical manuals and different audiences. The translator should take thisinto account and adjust the style accordingly. The translator should use clearand simple style, master the correct technical terminology and read eachsentence as you were the end user. One of my favorite comments from him was “Ifyou don’t understand what you are reading, you should also not attempt totranslate it”. He also gave many examples of being precise and on falsefriends, with references in his native language, European Portuguese.

João continued his presentation with somepractical tips, such as:

- nevertranslate the names of the support department, or else the letter may obviouslynot arrive to the correct place

- payattention to numbers and measurements since they are not written the same wayin all languages

- findout if labels and controls should be translated in the software or in themachine itself

- donot translate the names of buttons on the actual machine

- refuseto translate picture captions without seeing the actual picture

- havea check list for your work so you do not miss anything, such as manual spellcheck on top of machine spell check

- readthe whole manual (not literally, of course) before you start translating it

- collect,study and learn the main terminology that will be common in the type of manualsyou translate

- usea controlled and simplified (not simple) language

Joãodisplayed a great knowledge on the subject matter and presented a rather “dull”subject in a very entertaining and humorous way. For more information on Joãohimself, or his work you can go to his website: http://www.jrdias.com. To download his presentation (extendedversion in PDF format), this is the link: http://www.jrdias.com/PDF/JRD_Technical_Manuals_52ATA_2011.pdf

Penned byTess Whitty, English into Swedish translator specializing in IT, software and manualsfor consumer electronics http://www.swedishtranslationservices.com.

Sci-Tech Division Open House

2011-10-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

By Stephanie Strobel

The Sci-Tech Division stood out during Division Open-house following the Opening Reception at the ATA Annual Conference. The Sci-Tech Division table featured a creative construction toy “Super Marbleworks Raceway Construction Set.” It was well received by members of the division and particularly appreciated by out-going president, Nick Hartman, who said, “This is why I plan to become very involved in the Sci-Tech Division. These are my people!"

Why did a construction toy strike such a chord? Could it be Joy of Technology? Perhaps “Marbleworks” is the embodiment of technical translation. Technical translation is creative writing and it's active. Buildings go up; a hole goes into the ground; equipment is taken apart or reassembled; the page is displayed or a message is sent. Once the “Marbleworks” raceway is built, the marble "goes round and round and comes out there." Understanding of gravity and momentum guide the construction. It’s very satisfying the way gravity works to create the fun. It’s also very satisfying to see the way our knowledge of science and technology makes things happen.

Annual Conference Division Open House

2011-10-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

Division Open House

Wednesday, 7:00pm - 8:00pm

Meet and mingle with members from all 16 ATA Divisions!

ATA Divisions are professional-interest groups providing specialty- andlanguage-specific information and networking to assist their members in today'scompetitive marketplace. Don't miss this opportunity to get to know them all.

A variety of desserts and coffee will be available.

Open to all ATA conference attendees.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY DIVISION SURVEY 2011

2011-10-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

Dear S&TD members,

I am writing on behalf of the Leadership Council. We wouldlike to thank all of you who took the time to respond to the survey we sent outin June 2011. Your responses have been very helpful in determining how we canbetter serve the division’s 1,300 members.

We received 113 responses and we are happy to observe fromthis sample how diverse our division is. Years of translation experience rangefrom less than five years (25%) to more than 21 years (28%). We are glad thatthe services provided so far have proved helpful to maintain the interests of bothnovices and established professionals. Moreover, the opinions and impressionsfrom such a mixed group have offered the Leadership Council a rounded understandingof the existing needs.

One remarkable finding from our survey is the breadth ofsubject matter areas in which our members specialize: from engineering and IT towaste and microphotolithography. The figure below shows the self-defined areasof expertise of those who responded.

Questions were asked about the services that the divisioncurrently offers or could consider adding. The chart below shows responses. Informationon the art of translation and specific subject-matter advice are particularly interestingto our respondents.

We have been and will continue covering these areas inour blog[1]and mailing list[2].Plans are in the works as to how to address these topics on our website. If youhave not yet visited these online communities or visit them infrequently, getin the habit so that you do not miss all the great information! Further, if youhave experience and expertise in a specific area that you would like to sharewith your fellow members, tell us. You can start a thread on the mailing listor ask a member of the Leadership Council individually if you prefer.[3]

Among the responses were requests for information ontopics that are not pertinent to our division, such as which translation toolsto use. We will avoid areas that are already covered by other ATA divisions andmailing lists, but we will share links to the other ATA divisions on ourwebsite.

Finally, our respondents have also noted that theyvisit such social networking sites as LinkedIn (73%), Twitter (19%), andFacebook (33%) for professional purposes at least occasionally. We do haveaccounts for the first two options, so if you would like to take advantage ofgetting news from us and your fellow members through those media, sign up toour group on LinkedIn[4]and follow @ATASciTech on Twitter.

While we can collect your opinions through suchsurveys only periodically, your comments and suggestions are always valuable. Weappreciate your continued feedback on how our division is doing. You cancontact us openly at any of the networking opportunities mentioned above, orcontact any of us privately.

On behalf of the Leadership Council,

Karen Tkaczyk, Acting Division Administrator

Thanks to the members of ourLeadership Council and Jamie Padula at ATA Headquarters for help with preparingand analyzing the survey.

[1] http://ata-sci-tech.blogspot.com

[2] http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ATASciTech/

[3] Email sent to S_TD@ata-divisions.org goes to the divisionadministrator

[4] http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3242350&trk=hb_side_g

Science and Technology Division Boston Special Event

2011-09-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

Scienceand Technology Division Boston Special Event

WednesdayOctober 26, 2011, 1-5 PM

Tripto Museum of Science

S&TD is organizing a trip for theafternoon of Wednesday (from 1 to 5 PM) to Boston’s Museum of Science, a famouslandmark founded in 1830 located in Science Park on a plot of land spanning theCharles River. It is only 8 subway stops from the conference hotel. Along withover 500 interactive exhibits, the Museum features a number of livepresentations and various shows throughout the building every day. Life, Earthand physical sciences, math exhibits, and current “hot” areas such asnanotechnology and nanomedicine are highlights. The tour is self-guided so youcan leave earlier if you wish.

Cost: $18.50 per person for a group rate ticket ifyou sign up and pay by October 10, 2011.

Last-minute attendees may join us, butmust pay the normal rate at the door.

Please mail your check for this trip for $18.50 madepayable to organizer Alicja Yarborough so that it arrives no later than October9,2011. Direct any questions to Alicja at yarborough@prodigy.net and send yourchecks to:

Alicja Yarborough

4400 ChalfontPlace

Bethesda, MD20816

You can learn more about the Museum of Science at http://www.mos.org/

Annual Conference: Science and Technology Division Dinner

2011-09-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

2011 Science and Technology Division Dinner
__________________________________________________________
Please join our group to enjoy superb Indian cuisine and S&TD
networking.

WHEN:
Thursday October 27, 2011, 6:30-9:30PM

WHERE:
Kashmir Indian Restaurant
279 Newbury St (one block from the hotel) Boston, MA 02116
(617) 262-4770
http://www.oneworldcuisine.com/Restaurants/Kashmir/k_index.php

Voted Best by Boston Magazine, The Improper Bostonian, and many others.

__________________________________________________________

MENU
__________________________________________________________

Appetizer:
Vegetable Pakora
Seekh Kebab

Entrés:
(served with 3 kinds of chutney)
Chicken Tikka Masala
Dal makhni
SahiAloogovi
Kabuli chana

Dessert:
Gulabjamun

__________________________________________________________

PAYMENT AND RESERVATIONS
__________________________________________________________

Cost for dinner is $37.50 (including tax and gratuity). You may purchase your own
drinks from the server.

Please mail your check for this dinner for $37.50 made payable to:

Alicja Yarborough
4400 Chalfont Place
Bethesda, MD 20816

Checks must arrive no later than October 9, 2011.

For both of these events it is First come, first served reservation.
Please don't assume there will be spaces left in October!

__________________________________________________________

QUESTIONS?
__________________________________________________________

Please direct any questions to organizer Alicja Yarborough at
yarborough@prodigy.net

Attending the FIT Congress: Thoughts from a Technical Translator

2011-08-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

The International Federation of Translators (FIT) holds a Congress every three years. This year it was run by ATA and held in San Francisco on August 1-4, 2011. The Congress has a reputation for being more theoretical than ATA conferences and for that reason, many translators don’t attend. However, San Francisco is within handy driving distance of my home, so the family planned a summertime trip to see the city and I took time out to attend one day of the Congress.

Regardless of how the Congress has been in the past, I knew that this year’s eclectic program had attracted some attendees and deterred others. I found plenty to enjoy, the meals (breakfast and a dinner reception) were good, and networking was easy in the area set apart for the Congress. About 600 people attended, and apart from the US, China and the Nordic countries appeared to be well represented.

In translating chemical and technical documents for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and medical device industries I frequently have to handle medical terminology. I went along to the session called “Comment enseigner la traduction médicale ?” (How should we teach medical translation?) by Christian E. Balliu of the Institut Supérieur de Traducteurs et Interprètes (ISTI) in Brussels. I thought it might give me tips for how to pick up that terminology. The speaker’s pair is Spanish into French, but the session was not language specific. In fact, this was a paper on a method of teaching translation students how to gain subject-matter expertise. The discussion veered towards finding the balance between technical expertise versus translation skills in producing good translations, an area we have often discussed in S&TD. In S&TD the balance of opinion tends to be towards ‘use a subject matter expert who can write’ whereas this speaker, perhaps unsurprisingly, leans towards ‘use a trained translator, and teach them a subject’.

This professor does not attempt to teach a huge spread of information to give a subject area overview. Instead, he drills deep and narrow in one particular field, immunology, and more specifically AIDS. This seems to me to be a helpful way to teach students, as it is a realistic comparison with how we learn on the job, whenever we accept a job in a field that is in a new area. As to how long it takes to obtain the required subject matter expertise, that’s another issue.

One key problem I felt the speaker glossed over was problems in register that are more common in medical work than in other areas of technical translation. Finding an equivalent medical term in another language is frequently easy. Determining the cultural factors that mean another register may be required in the target language is often very difficult.

I was not the only person in the room looking for time for a lively debate on these and other issues, though I’d have been in the minority on the ‘use a subject-matter expert who can write’ topic. Regardless, I found it thought provoking to hear the opinions of what appeared to be a roomful of translation studies professors.

Another session I attended was “The Beginning of Wisdom” by Nick Hartmann, who is currently the ATA president, and was the division administrator for the Science and Technology Division in its previous incarnation. Nick filled in at the last minute for a cancellation, on a topic that I had previously seen in a written paper, that I thought I would enjoy. The session took an email communication between a client and a technical translator and used that as a springboard for an examination of the issues, both text and business related, that technical translators commonly face, and from which we can begin to have wisdom. Topics included the nature of the business relationship, degrees of responsibility, having good technical instincts, developing understanding, time management, subject matter expertise, and terminology. Quite a list! However, by using this example email and focusing on the big picture of what we ought to be doing, Nick dropped many pearls of wisdom during his allotted hour. If this makes you wonder what they were, you can read the paper at Nick’s website: http://nhartmann.com/ and see if you agree with my take on it.

Those were the sessions I attended that were of relevance to S&TD. I had a great, tiring day and am pleased I attended. The venue for the next FIT Congress was selected during this event, and it will be in Berlin, Germany.

Karen M. Tkaczyk, PhD, works as a French (ATA-certified) and Spanish into English freelance translator. Her translation work is highly specialized, being entirely focused on chemistry and its industrial applications. She holds an MChem in Chemistry with French (University of Manchester, UK), a Diploma in French and a PhD in Organic Chemistry (University of Cambridge, UK). She worked in the pharmaceutical industry in Europe, then after relocating in 1999, in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics in the US. Karen has taken technical writing and editing courses, and enjoys motivating translators to improve their technical writing skills as well as their subject matter expertise.

Branching out from Translation Events: a Translator’s View of the Society for Technical Communication’s Annual Meeting

2011-06-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

By Karen M. Tkaczyk

Each year I define a strategic aim for my business. In 2011, I selected one tool that serves a twofold purpose: I joined the Society for Technical Communication (STC). The goals were to improve my writing and editing skills, and to broaden my professional network. Making the most of the society’s online resources is obvious, but attending training events and the annual meeting at the member rate was also part of my plan. I’ve had this on the back burner for a while, and brought it forward this year because the society’s annual meeting, called the ‘Summit’, was within driving distance of where I live. This made it easier and cheaper to attend than other years.

In exploring the STC, I learnt some things I expected to, and made a few discoveries. One of the first was that many translators have taken this path. When I reviewed content from previous STC events, I came across many translators I admire: Chris Durban, Nick Rosenthal, and Caitilin Walsh, for example.

The Summit took place in Sacramento from May 15-18, 2011. About 800 people attended. For comparison, since some readers will be familiar with ATA conferences, the set-up is similar to those in terms of a multi-track program, opening and closing events, an exhibit hall, and business and honors meetings. It is different from an ATA event in that it takes place in a conference center, using two adjacent hotels for some social events. It also costs more to attend: about double, depending how early you commit.

One audible difference struck me. I’ve spent time at translation and science conferences in recent years, and they were multicultural events attended by global communities. The STC event wasn’t. It’s obvious really, when you consider it, but English was all I heard spoken. Most of those present appeared to be monolingual English speakers.

My most surprising discovery was how much STC and the broader technical communication industry focuses on writing for translation. I was surprised because we read and hear of so much dreadful, inconsistent technical writing. However, techcom professionals, as they call themselves, are hammering home from all angles that effective technical writing reduces translation costs, and that you should use a professional to get the results you need. Does that sound familiar?

As well as using the craft of a skilled, trained wordsmith, many technical strategies exist to improve technical communications. The exhibit hall and a software tools track exposed me to much with which I wasn’t previously familiar. Controlled language is a hot topic, as is topic-based authoring.

Another feature of the exhibit hall was abundant translation companies. About ten, I think. I was a rare passer-by: a potential vendor rather than a potential client. I scheduled my visit to the hall so that it was quiet, and enjoyed some good, relationship-building conversations with potential clients and one current client. It was helpful to be the ‘odd one out’, asking different questions than most attendees.

One of the STC’s special interest groups (SIGs), which function like ATA divisions, is the International Technical Communication (ITC) group. Some of the ITC sessions were a great deal of fun as well as instructive: hearing the trials of the translation process from the buyers’ point of view always is full of insights. Being able to ask questions from the ‘other’ point of view meant I stood out and that many people had reason to follow up with me afterwards. I also enjoyed sessions on how to edit well: both theories of editing and practical tips. Sessions on how to shrink bloated documents appealed too. Similar to ATA, there were business-oriented sessions. A panel discussion on the pros and cons of taking a business beyond the individual contractor or consultant model was insightful and realistic.

Many technical writers are freelancers, but the proportion of writers and editors in full-time employment was much higher than at a translation conference. Sessions were as likely to be on managing teams and getting the best out of your staff as on running a freelance business.

I hope this short review whets your appetite for finding out more about the STC, or rules it out as being of use in your translation practice. If you would like to read more, see recorded sessions from the Summit, or investigate STC generally, see http://summit.stc.org/. I will try to finish the year strong and make the most out of the money and time invested in my goal. Then I have to decide what to do for next year!

Software Translation and Localization

2011-05-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Software Translation and Localization

Localization (sometimes shortened to "l10n" because there are 10 letters between the l and the n) is when you adapt a product or service to a particular language, culture, and desired local "look-and-feel." Ideally, a product or service is developed so that this localization is relatively easy to achieve - for example, by creating technical illustrations for manuals where text can easily be changed to another language and allowing some expansion room for this purpose. This process is termed internationalization. An internationalized product or service is therefore easier to localize. The process of first enabling a product to be localized and then localizing it for different national audiences is sometimes known as globalization (definitions from Whatis.com).

When you localize a product, you do not only localize idiomatic language and words, you also need to change such details such as time zones, money, national holidays, local color sensitivities, product or service names, gender roles, and geographic examples. A successfully localized service or product is one that appears to have been developed within the local culture.

Software translation refers to the translation of all graphical user interface (GUI) components of a software application, such as dialog boxes, menus and error or status messages displayed on screen. Most localization projects start with the software translation. Translation of online help and documentation should not begin until the software is fully translated and reviewed, because online help and documentation typically contain many references to the software user interface (definition from Whatis.com).

Software localization has the potential to open up your target market ten-fold. It is very important that all documentation and interface text is translated with accurate technical language and nomenclature. International users of computer software expect their software to “talk” to them in their own language. It is not only a matter of convenience, but a matter of productivity. Users who understand a product fully can handle it better and avoid mistakes. They will prefer applications in their own language, adapted to their cultural environment. For example, the Swedish market is on the frontline when it comes to adaptation and usage of new software. Most Swedes know English, but they still want and expect their software to be in Swedish.

What is the role of translators in the software localization process?

Translators who work on a software localization project are often part of a large and widely dispersed team. The complex organization of the whole software localization team creates new challenges to us independent translators, who usually work on neatly delimited projects which are our only responsibility.

In software localization projects, translators are expected to be able to use the tools required for software localization, to know the market and many of its products, to know our position in the process, and to understand the limitations with short production cycles. That is why most translators working in software localization do so through intermediary translation bureaus, which are often specialized software localization companies.

Translation of software follows a cycle of comprehension. Translators are almost never given more than a brief summary of the product, and we must do a lot of guessing as to what function actually does what and what to call it when we translate. Often the purpose of a function, dialog box, or command will become apparent to translators first when we get to the help file that explains it. In this case we may have to go back and change the term that was used in the first version of the software translation. It may not even be the same person doing the software and the help, which complicates matters even further. Too often the software is already ready for production and no further changes are possible.

One of the attributes that characterize successful software translators is the ability to guess correctly about what given software string or dialog box or function actually does, to avoid having to loop back wherever possible. This is why experience plays an important role. (Facets of Software Localization, Per N. Dohler, 1997, Translation Journal)

Software localization tools

In software localization, good tools are important. Without specialized tools, localization of software is very difficult and time consuming, with many repetitive tasks. Fortunately, there is a variety of specialized tools available today.

The main source and target formats: resource files (RC) or binary files such as EXE or DLL usually contain short translatable text strings surrounded by non-translatable code. Software localization tools have to extract these short strings properly, provide a convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for the translation of the strings and save the translations correctly back into the surrounding code.

Examples of specialized software localization tools:

· Catalyst

· Language Studio

· Lingobit Localizer

· Microsoft Loc Studio

· Multilizer

· Passolo

· RC-WinTrans

· SDL Insight

· Sisulizer

· Visual Localize

In contrast, software documentation files (HLP, HTML, CHM, HTML or PDF) contain much more translatable text in much longer test strings. These files are usually better handled by translation memory software (TM), which memorizes already used phrases, typically segmented by full-stops, and enables their recycling.

Examples of translation memory software:

· Across

· DejaVu

· Heartsome

· SDLX

· Trados

· Transit

· Wordfast

· Wordfisher

I use Passolo, Catalyst, LocStudio, Trados Studio and Wordfast, of which I like some better than the others. For example, from a translator’s point of view I like Passolo, Wordfast and Studio the best.

Four Software Localization Mistakes to Avoid

There is a lot to think about when translating and localizing software, and making mistakes is easy. Here are 4 examples of mistakes to avoid:

1. Neglecting the importance of the length of the translated words, which would require redesigning the software to fit the foreign language version, losing time and money.

2. Disregarding localization for specific countries/regions and their particular elements (special characters, date format, number format, address structure, postal code length and structure, calendar format etc.)

3. Not using simple, concise text that is familiar to most people and users of the software

4. Not providing clear and accurate text in the target language, making the instructions and commands nonsensical or hard to understand.

Software Translation and Localization – What I Do

Finally, here is a word on what I personally do when it comes to software translation and localization. Swedish Translation Services (that is, I) provide Swedish translation and localization of the following:

§ Software/user interface

§ Help screens, instructions, menus, shortcut keys

§ Software manuals

§ License agreements

§ Legal and security disclaimers

§ Warranty arrangements

§ Marketing material and packaging content

§ Cultural related content

Further reading and resources for localization professionals and translators

Books about localization:

A Practical Guide to Localization, by Bert Esselink

Enabling Globalization: A Guide to Using Localization to Penetrate International Markets, by Nabil Freij and Molly Froats (Kindle book)

Localization: A Global Manifesto, by Colin Hines

Here is another great website that has all resources you can think of for localization professionals and translators, all on one page. It is called the Localization Directory, and includes tools for software localization, translation memory tools, dictionaries, glossaries, terminology and linguistics for localization, articles, forums and educational resources.

http://www.theverybestofstuff.de/localization/localizationlinks.htm

Tess Whitty has nine years of experience as a freelance translator from English into Swedish with her company Swedish Translation Services. She specializes in software localization, marketing and business communications. She has a M.A. in Business Communications and PR from Belgium and a M.Sc. in Economics from Finland. Before working as a translator she worked for a Telecommunications company in Sweden as a Product Marketing Manager. She is the language chair for the new English-Swedish certification program and a member of American Translators Association and was recently appointed president of the Utah Translators and Interpreters Association and she has previously served as the president for the Swedish School in Salt Lake City for five years. She runs a successful freelance translation business, and works with both agencies and direct clients. She has also presented at both the ATA Annual Conference and the ProZ Virtual Conference. Her presentations cover marketing and business skills for freelance translators.

Call for Nominations, 2012-2013

2011-04-30T17:03:00.000-07:00

The Division is calling for nominations for the positions of Administrator and Assistant Administrator, for 2012 and 2013. For a description and schedule of the election process, including a nomination form, see:

http://www.ata-divisions.org/S_TD/S_TD_Call_For_Nominations_2011.htm

Steven Marzuola
Assistant Administrator

Commenting on the ATA Sci-Tech Blog Simplified

2011-04-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

We've changed it so visitors can post without using a Google account or any other online membership. Thank you, Steven Marzuola.

To comment you will still need to select a profile, however you can just use your name and any URL.

If you use the anonymous option, please include your name in the comment. Anonymous comments may not be posted.

A moderator must review the comment and post it if appropriate.

Thank you for your patience.

How to Comment on the ATA Sci-Tech Blog Articles

2011-04-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

A note from the editor.

It starts out easily enough with the desire to comment on an interesting article.
You click comment and a dialog box appears. So far so good.
You type your comment and click post.

Now the system is going to start making demands.

In order to comment you must sign in using an account profile with:
Google
WordPress
LiveJournal
TypePad
AIM
OpenID

It is easy to create a profile on Google. You can use your existing email address.

Please let me know if you have difficulties commenting on blog articles.
Stephanie Strobel, sds@strobelengineering.com

The Society for Technical Communication (STC)

2011-04-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

By Barbara Jungwirth

STC is the oldest existing professional organization for people involved in the various aspects of technical communication, from graphic artists providing technical sketches, to writer/programmers creating online help content, to translators transferring that content into other languages. Other professions represented in the organization include indexers, information architects, developers of e-learning courses, technical communications teachers, and many more. As the STC states on their website, "What all technical communicators have in common is a user-centered approach to providing the right information, in the right way, at the right time to make someone's life easier and more productive."

The organization is divided into local chapters, including a number in other countries and includes "Special Interest Groups (SIGs)", similar to ATA Divisions. Relevant to translators is the International Technical Communication SIG (ITC SIG), which, according to the SIG website, is "focused on localization, translation, and cross cultural communication for technology." The SIG's website is essentially a blog that includes a "related organizations" tab with announcements/information on international conferences and organizations such as the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA). ATA events could be included here.

Since many members of STC are involved in producing the source text we then translate, it would be helpful for us to know more about the technical writing process and for the technical writers to understand the translation process better. This includes learning about the tools used by these respective communities - RoboHelp, AuthorIt and similar programs on the technical writing end and Trados, Wordfast and similar programs on the translation end. If both groups have a better understanding of the opportunities and limitations of the tools and processes on each end, we can work together much more effectively.

STC organizes an annual conference, called the Technical Communication Summit. The 2011 Summit will take place May 15-18 in Sacramento, California. (Learn more, here: http://summit.stc.org/) The Summit includes international communications topics, including a workshop on "Writing With Localization in Mind" this year. The ITC SIG also usually organizes a set of mini presentations, called a "Progression". In addition, STC offers webinars during the course of the year. One webinar topic of interest to translators was a pilot project using translation memory tools to write the source text. This helps ensure consistency within the text, which then also helps translators leverage their translation memories.

It may be helpful for ATA to introduce similar topics -- e.g., how to link technical writing tools that support multilingual text to translation tools; how to convince our end clients to plan for collaboration with the source text writers earlier in the process; what technical writers expect from translators -- to ATA webinars or the ATA Annual Conference. In any case, closer collaboration between ATA's Science and Technology Division and STC's International Communication Special Interest Group can only benefit both groups involved in producing multi-lingual technical texts.

Barbara Jungwirth provides German-English technical translation services through her company, reliable translations. Before becoming a translator, she wrote software documentation. She is a member of both ATA and STC, presented on preparing source text for translation for the STC SIG at the 2009 Summit and contributes to STC's journal Technical Communication. She also writes a blog about technical translation, On Language and Translation (http://reliable-translations.blogspot.com).

52nd Annual Conference

2011-04-18T21:08:00.001-07:00

The American Translators Association (ATA) will host its 52nd Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts (October 26-29). This conference showcases diverse panel discussions, expert presentations, training workshops, and scholarly papers. Both general and language-specific sessions will be offered. The conference also offers language professionals one of the best opportunities to network with colleagues. Additional conference activities include a Job Marketplace, a vendor exhibit hall, and ATA certification testing. For conference information see http://www.atanet.org/conf/2011/

Is There A Better Way?

2011-04-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

By John Rock

On reading “Translation in Canada,” an article in The Chronicle (October 2010) about translation in Canada, I was struck by the certification practices of OTTIAQ where, according to the article, there is no certification exam; rather, one must have a translation degree and perform a mentorship under a certified member for five years. Without a translation degree, a person must prove that he or she has worked at least five years as a full time translator and can submit a corpus of work for evaluation by committee. This immediately rang a bell with me, since I have always maintained that it takes five years of hard work between when you think you are a translator and when you know you are a translator and can handle almost anything thrown at you.

It also highlighted what, in my opinion, has been a serious defect with the ATA certification exams: a suitable process does not appear to exist to certify translators who have come to translation from any field other than the language arts. Although here I am addressing primarily technical translators, this also applies to medical, legal, and financial translators. Thus we have the bizarre situation where newly minted language graduates take the ATA certification with flying colors, and then feel competent to tackle any subject matter under the sun.

On the flip side of the coin, experienced translators who have been working in the field for literally decades performing the heavy lifting for the translation community, continue to flunk the ATA exam because they have not dotted some “i” or crossed some “t”. Any translator who has taken the exam will realize the examination process is not transparent and is shrouded in secrecy. Why, may we ask?

Yet, any agency or company going to the ATA website looking for a translator is mainly going to find the “certified” translators and not necessarily those translators which have the in-depth background experience to provide a professional service. The question should be asked: “Is the ATA failing in its duty to provide qualified professional translators for American businesses and industry?”

As for my own experience, I obtained certification in one of my languages and simply gave up trying to achieve certification in my other languages. It was like throwing good money after bad. The sad truth is, I am willing to bet, based on the cross-section of translators I have met, that there are probably several hundred “long-term” professional translators out there who are frankly disillusioned with the ATA examination process.

I have railed against not only the certification process itself, which I suspect is dominated by language arts professors, but also against those language professors who claim to be able to teach technical translation, legal translation and medical translation by giving their students a few glossaries and test translations on which to whet their teeth.

So situations continue to arise in which long-standing technical translators find themselves editing poor translations from “certified” translators who really do not have the background or experience to know the subject matter. The corollary to this is that perfectly good technical translations are shredded by an editor who thinks they know what they are doing.

As an example of this, I have a shelf and a half of Oil & Gas dictionaries, I have probably translated close to a hundred oil refinery projects, yet I had a translation come back shredded by an “in-house” editor who thought they knew better. I could not be bothered to argue.

ATA itself balks at any call to re-examine its certification process, claiming that the only model which suffices is “the language itself.” Spoken like a true language arts graduate. Yet our Canadian cousins offer an alternative model for certification. Is it not at least worth close examination? No pun intended.

I am sure some readers will simply say “sour grapes,” and it would be if I were writing simply for myself. But as indicated earlier, I have given up on the ATA certification exam because in my opinion, it is not worth the paper it is written on. However, I am thinking about those generations of technical translators who are coming after us and who are struggling to make a living in the translation community where certification would mean a lot; it could mean the difference between making it or not.

So I make this assertion: the ATA is not in fact serving the translation community that it purports to serve.

I challenge ATA to take a survey of its members to find out what percentage of its members who have been working as full time translators for 5, 10, 15, and over 20 years are not certified in the languages in which they normally work.

I challenge ATA to review its certification model in the light of alternative models such as our Canadian cousins and come up with a better one.

ATA should be a world leader in translator certification, and I fear it is not.

John Rock holds a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Liverpool, U.K. He has worked for the Instituto Oceanografico, USP, São Paulo, Brazil, and for UNESCO in Athens, Greece. His career in the Oil Industry involved the former Gulf Oil Company with geophysical seismic research, and Schlumberger Wireline Services. He has been at various times: a Marine Engineering Consultant, Computer Consultant, Geophysical Consultant and University lecturer in Applied Mathematics. For the last twenty five years he has been a full time freelance technical translator initially based in Houston, Texas, and now in Charleston, S.C., working with Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian to English.

Audiences

2011-03-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

By Barbara Jungwirth

Gary Smith's Oct. 4, 2010 post in this blog, "Translation and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" noted that consumers generally don't consult help files or the documentation for their devices. They simply give up if a device doesn't work the way they think it should.

On the other hand, how often have you and I attempted to decipher badly written, badly organized and/or badly translated documentation for some device we bought? Small wonder that customers don’t even try to consult documentation after they have encountered a few such texts written in programmer speak, containing factual errors or translated into garbled English. If customers are to get into the habit of consulting help files or booklets, they must consistently encounter files or booklets that actually help them to solve problems with the devices they handle.

This, in turn, means that the documentation -- in whatever form -- must not only be accurate and well written, but also well-organized, with a device's particular audience in mind. A cell phone intended for senior citizens, for example, needs to be accompanied by an extensive printed booklet illustrating each step with large screen shots. A software developer kit that lets programmers write code for a certain computer platform, on the other hand, requires only very specific online information and can include acronyms and IT terminology.

While technical writers need to keep their audience in mind when writing the source text, we translators all too often forget -- or never know -- who might be reading our document. Just as the original writer's word choices depend on the target audience, so do ours. Sometimes we can glean from the source document who the likely readers might be, as in the examples cited above. If that is not obvious and if the client didn't tell us, we should ask. No need for extensive audience analysis, the answer to "Will this document be provided to the consumer or to the technician servicing the device?" or a similar question should provide enough information so that we can gear our choice of vocabulary and sentence structure towards the target audience.

Barbara Jungwirth provides German-English technical translation services through her company, reliable translations. Before becoming a translator, she wrote software documentation. This article is based on one of the posts on her blog, On Language and Translation (http://reliable-translations.blogspot.com).

Conference Session Review: Making Sense of U.S. and French Patent Terminology

2011-03-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

By Joanne Archambault

I was in attendance for Bruce Popp’s presentation on “French Patent Terminology”. I have only translated a few patents up to now, and hope to translate more in the near future, so I was keen to learn appropriate patentese from an experienced patent translator like Bruce.

The first gem was a link (http://www.epo.org/patents/law/legal-texts/epc.html) to the European Patent Convention, a tri-lingual document with European Patent Office (EPO) rules and regulations. This is a valuable source for the terminology used in EPO documents—you can search for a term in one language and then look at the parallel sections in the other languages. Bruce said, “Don’t translate EPO documents without it.”

He then spoke about the definition of word phrases that occur in patents. An inventor can define whatever term they want, as long as any special meaning assigned to it is clearly set forth in the patent. The translator must translate this definition accurately, even if the definition set out in the patent is not consistent with current use of this word or phrase.

Bruce also explained how articles (“a” vs. “the” vs. “said”) used in patents depend on whether there is an antecedent for the noun. On the first appearance of a noun ‘a’ (un, une in French) is used. On a repeat occurrence of the same noun, “the” (le, la, les in French) is used; “the” indicates that an antecedent for the noun exists. Finally “said” (not “the said”; ledit, ladite, lesdites in French) is used to insist that this noun was referenced before.

One of the most useful things for me was Bruce’s discussion of the distinction between open and closed lists. An open list is non-exhaustive; other items can be added to the composition. In French, the key words are “comprendre, comporter”, which in English would be translated to “comprising, containing, including, characterized by”. A closed list claims what is explicitly listed. In French, the key words are “consister”, “constituer”, which in English would be translated as “consisting of” or “composed of”. And in between these two types of list is the middle ground type, which in French uses the words “consister essentiellement”, “ayant” or “avoir”. This limits the claims to the listed items and to those that do not materially affect the characteristics of the invention. Appropriate English wording for this type of list is “consisting essentially of”, or “having”.

Bruce offered some general terminology advice. Avoid the use of “‘s” (the possessive/genitive form) “the characteristic of the shoe” is preferred over “the shoe’s characteristic”, and also avoid the use of “its” in patent translations. Other juicy terminology advice included making sure to translate these words correctly:
Éventuellement (FR) --> Optionally, which may (EN)
Classiquement (FR) --> Conventionally (EN)
Impliquer (FR) --> Involve (EN)
Introduire (FR) --> Insert, put in, add (EN)
Susceptible (FR) --> Suitable, likely (EN)

And when you see “selon revendication”, the preferred translation is “as claimed in claim”; “according to claim” is also an acceptable translation. If you come across “caractérisé en ce que” or “caractérise par”, the preferred translation is “characterized in that” or “characterized by”. The use of “wherein” here is also OK.

Overall, I learned a great deal during this presentation. Bruce is knowledgeable, has an easy-going presentation style and connects well with the audience. As a bonus, he has great stories to share about the consequences of badly translated patents.

Joanne Archambault is a FR > EN translator with a PhD in Biology, who
specializes in Pharmaceuticals and Orthopedics. She works on a
variety of documents, including patents, in these areas.

Photonics: Is Copper Now Best Suited for Jewelry?

2011-02-07T11:57:00.000-08:00

By Rafaela Novais

Photonics is a term that is not very common, but is starting to gain space in the news and in our personal world, albeit, behind the scenes. This short article should give you a quick overview of the subject, and not leave you looking like a deer in the headlights whenever the subject comes up. I hope this will familiarize you with the basics of the photonics world and pique your curiosity for more. For the experts, may you be entertained. I have also included several terms in Portuguese which appear in brackets.

According to Merriam-Webster, Photonics is a “branch of physics that deals with the properties and applications of photons, especially, as a medium for transmitting information.” This may include detecting, modulating, transmitting, and receiving light. Most of the photonics applications use light in the visible and near-infrared spectra, with wavelengths ranging from 380nm to 2,500nm.
Most communications applications use wavelengths between 850nm and 1675nm due to the higher stability of the signals in the fiber optic waveguides that are commercially available.Waveguides [guias de ondas]are the media used to transmit waves,such as light. You might also see the term multi-mode waveguide [guia de ondas multímodo].

As early as the 1960, with the inventions of lasers, laser diodes, optical fibers [fibras óticas], and cables, it became clear that the technology could be used, initially, for telecommunications and later, for the broader application of high volume data transfer. At that time, copper was the transmission media of choice.

Today, optical fiber cables make it possible for a signal to travel at very high speeds over long distances with very little signal loss (attenuation), and with virtually no electromagnetic interference. Over long distances, copper cables suffer from attenuation losses which lead to poor signal quality. They also are subject to electromagnetic field coupling effects between the adjacent conductors, known as crosstalk, and their proximity to other sources of electromagnetic noise (such as power sources).

To make a fair comparison between copper and fiber optic cables, I need to introduce you to another basic concept: the way we encode and decode the signals transmitted. On one end of the cable, electronic signals need to be converted to photonic ones to be transmitted and converted back to electronic signals at the other end to be understood by our current electronics. Copper cables transmit signals directly to our electronics. One of the fastest copper cables currently available, the Category 6a 10GBASE-T (10-Gigabit Ethernet) cables, has been developed with increased resistance to crosstalk [diafonia] and performance of up to 500MHz, but its length is limited to 100 meters. This length limit is further reduced in hostile crosstalk or interference environments. On the other hand, a single-mode fiber cable transmitting at an equivalent 10GBASE-ER, including encoding and decoding, would deliver 10GHz over 40 kilometers, without significant attenuation.

Now, one would ask: if fiber cables are so much better, why aren’t they widely available to consumers?

With the high speed, low attenuation, and high bandwidth characteristics, optical fiber cables have become a much more feasible and desirable medium for signal transmission over long distances. For distances shorter than about 100m, copper is still preferred due to its much lower cost. Another issue for fiber is that the infrastructure of most cities does not support fiber cables all the way into homes.

Currently, viable applications of optical cables [cabo de fibra ótica] are high-speed data centers around the world, like facilities that support internet search engines and social networks, financial markets (possibly your bank), and other data centers that need to be highly-available and handle high data traffic. Several companies in the United States, Asia, and Western Europe have recently accelerated work to expand and innovate in this market.

So, don’t go unplugging your old copper cables to use as necklaces just yet. There’s still plenty of use left in them.

Rafaela Novais has worked in the Semiconductor Industry as a memory designer and an automation engineer for more than 12 years. She currently works at Luxtera, the leading CMOS photonics chip provider. Rafaela was born in Brazil and has lived in the United States for over 20 years. She is currently a translation student at New York University, focusing on the English to Brazilian Portuguese Language pair. She’s also a songwriter, poet, loves cooking and dogs.

The Full Wiki is the source for the images in this article.

The Full Wiki
The Full Wiki
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike

Happy New Year 2011

2011-01-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

A brief note to mark S&TD's first full new year since since it was re-established. Happy New Year to you all. May your practices thrive and grow and may low-paying, tiresome clients be a thing of the past!
Our trusty blog editor Stephanie Strobel broke her femur while skiing in December, so I'm writing... We wish her a speedy, complete recovery.
At last count the division had 483 members. Welcome to the large group of new members who joined after the annual conference. Please feel free to introduce yourself in a comment. Some of you have joined the Yahoo mailing list, others the LinkedIn group, and others follow the blog. By posting some key items in all three places we hope to give as many members as possible a convenient way of keeping in touch and being involved.
The next task for the division administrators will be to find invited speakers for the Boston conference. That process happens early each year. We have some ideas, but please do let us know if you have speakers to recommend, especially if they are in the Boston area. Later we hope to arrange a strong program of S&TD sessions and a site visit, but the initial focus is on the invited speakers.
Thanks to all of you who have become involved with the division. We look forward to it growing and thriving in 2011.

From Spoiling Chicken to Spoiling Terrorism: A Tour of the National Institute of Standards and Technology

2010-12-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

By Dana Scruggs
On a gorgeous autumn day in the Colorado Rockies, an enthusiastic group of translators from around the world gathered in Denver to catch the bus to Boulder for a tour of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), on October 21, 2010. The tour had been arranged by Karen Tkaczyk as one of the preconference activities of the 51st Annual Conference of the American Translators Association. The 20 or so of us who participated are certainly thankful for her efforts.

Scientific information without end, data that defy imagination, mind-boggling facts, the furthest reaches of physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and electronics, not to mention lasers, clean rooms bathed in yellow light, the mystical atomic clock, superconductors, absolute zero, nanotechnology, quantum voltage, devices and computing – this is merely a sampling of the provocative concepts we found ourselves immersed in during our 2-hour tour of the NIST Boulder laboratories. The facility itself exudes a "way-back" feel, having been dedicated by President Eisenhower in 1954. The stark contrast between the somewhat bleak interior design and the prodigiousness of the work being conducted therein could not have been more pronounced. It is rarefied work being performed in a rarefied atmosphere, figuratively and literally, since Boulder sits at 5430 feet above sea level. Directly behind the facility the iconic Flatirons soar nearly two thousand feet into the sky and runners can be seen traversing the trails that extend along their base.

I will not attempt to list all of the facts and information we learned during our tour since much of it can be found on the Internet (www.nist.gov). I also highly recommend the video "What is NIST?” as a great overview of the impressive mission that defines this agency (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/overview_video.cfm).

To paraphrase two statements made in the above-cited video, NIST is a group of "very smart and dedicated engineers and scientists who are making measurements and standards that affect our lives positively every day”. It is a federal research agency – part of the U.S. Commerce Department – that is “working to improve our nation’s economy and quality of life”.

Now that I have toured a NIST facility, I can say that I wholeheartedly concur with these statements. I was very impressed by the depth and variety of talent represented among the relatively small population of only 350 employees of NIST Boulder. The scientists and engineers who work there perform research at the furthest edge of science and engineering to develop applications for use across the entire spectrum of human activity, from the mundane to the abstract. NIST won the Emmy Award in 1980, for instance, for developing closed captioning. At the other end of the developmental spectrum, NIST scientists co-created the Bose-Einstein condensate (in 1995), which is the fifth state of matter and the potential of which is still unknown.

Much of the work underway at NIST assists in homeland security efforts. Specifically we learned that the “puffer machines” (explosives trace detection portal machines) we encounter as we go through airport security were developed by NIST. The materials reliability lab in Boulder tested pieces of steel beams recovered from the fallen World Trade Center to learn how to improve the safety of future buildings. The events of that day have prompted yet another project currently underway at NIST, namely that of synchronizing communication systems for first responders.

Our group met with four specialists in their laboratories, where we learned about the atomic clock, quantum devices, testing hydrogen pipelines for safety, and thermophysical properties testing.

Of the many endeavors underway at NIST Boulder, the atomic clock is certainly one that captured our imagination. It is referred to as NIST-F1 and is the world’s most accurate standard for measuring the length of the second. All U.S. civilian time and frequency are based on this standard.

Exactly how accurate is the atomic clock? Get a load of this: NIST-F1 is off by one second every 80 million years. Drop that factoid at your next cocktail party to liven things up! And, when you send out the invitations to that cocktail party, be sure to invite Steve Jefferts, the overseer of the NIST atomic clock. He is irrepressively exuberant. We were told that he has appeared on NOVA, contributes to the Web site “How Stuff Works”, and that we should simply “Google” his name and enjoy all of the hits we get.

NIST-F1 provides accurate timekeeping for practical use in our everyday world. The NIST server responds to about 3 billion automated requests each day for atomic time, e.g. to update the time on our personal computers.

A key concept we encountered during our visit to the atomic clock lab was the definition of time. The "time" output by the atomic clock is defined by a certain number of cycles of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the cesium atom as it switches between its two lowest energy states. This “certain number of cycles" is about 9 billion.

Every passage of 9 billion cycles is deemed to be one second. Why? Because the “cesium second” is identical in length to the second as it was defined in 1967 when this new (atomic) method was implemented. Dr. Jefferts told us that the second used to be defined as a certain fraction of the time it took for the Earth to make one complete revolution about the sun. I find it fascinating that we have switched our calibration point for the second from one of the largest objects in our immediate universe, the sun, to one of the smallest, the cesium atom.

Heady stuff, this visit to the atomic clock laboratory! Yet the lab, the atomic clock, and Dr. Jefferts were as unpretentious and robust as they could be: the configuration of the atomic clock itself, comprising lasers that cool the cesium atoms to a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero, and the tower in which cesium atoms are bombarded with microwave radiation to change their energy states is protected behind hanging strips of thick, transparent plastic like those that hang in the entrance to a walk-in freezer in a warehouse. We did not have to wear hair nets or protective clothing. The air inflow into the lab has been redirected away from the atomic clock set-up using a cardboard box duct-taped over the vent near the ceiling. Dr. Jefferts joyfully oversees the device that provides accurate time-stamping for billions of dollars of financial transactions every day, among other portentous tasks, in a comfy pair of Birkenstock sandals and may likely use as transportation to and from work one of the myriad of bicycles we saw parked in the bike rack outside the building.

Hyper-accurate timekeeping enabled the development of the global positioning system (GPS). We were told that the accuracy of GPS for civilian use is +/- 10 cm at the range between a satellite and a point on the Earth (such as your car). Military applications of GPS, however, must account for tremendous velocities such as that of a fighter jet or a missile and are much more accurate.

The puffer machine mentioned initially was developed by the thermophysical properties division of NIST. The scientist in that laboratory, a young woman, Dr. Tara Lovestead, described how those machines can detect a single molecule of TNT or C-4 on a person. Her laboratory is developing a technique to detect volatile fire retardants in car interiors, for instance. She showed us a chunk of plastic material that had been taken from a car dashboard. This type of material, which is commonly used in our automobiles, is saturated with a fire retardant for our safety but which ironically may be harmful to our health as it is slowly released inside the car.

Dr. Lovestead also reminded us about the "plastic bottle" scare we experienced a few years ago, when we were told to avoid drinking fluids from bottles made of biphenyls because that chemical was carcinogenic and could leach into the beverage. Her lab tested biphenyls in plastic bottles and determined that they did not pose any danger to our health. We recognized how successfully the media had created an alarming story.

A current project underway in her laboratory involves developing a device for monitoring food spoilage. She demonstrated how this handheld puffer device tests the gas that forms in packages of chicken commonly sold in supermarkets. Meat inspectors may someday use Dr. Lovestead’s invention to monitor the safety of our food supply.

Our next stop took us to the hydrogen pipeline testing facility, where James Fekete showed us a section of a pipeline that had been cut open and etched with a minor crack. He said the next step would be to apply enough force to the crack to break the pipe apart. The objective is to develop a pipeline made of a material that can successfully conduct hydrogen gas and safely withstand earthquakes and other immense forces. Hydrogen is an attractive fuel source because it burns cleanly without carbon emissions and can be derived from domestic sources. But containing it within pipelines poses numerous challenges which this laboratory is attempting to overcome.

Dr. David Rudman, Quantum Devices Group Leader, described his group’s research into superconductors and nanoelectric circuits. A superconductor is a material that conducts current with no resistance, although it must be cooled to extraordinarily low temperatures to do so. He was especially keen on "Josephson junctions" which are composed partially of superconducting material. The written summary of his talk mentions that his group develops complex circuits containing up to 32,000 Josephson junctions. We may not understand what these devices are now, but I suspect they will make an impact on our lives some day, thanks to the work being done at NIST. (Remember: You heard it here first!)

Dr. Rudman also mentioned, as an aside, that their group has developed the capability to examine spent Iranian fuel rods from space and determine if they’d been used for bomb-making or not. Hearing that definitely made my day. Another project his group is working on aims to measure a single photon. A photon is the most fundamental unit – or packet – of light, and we therefore say that a photon is a quantum of light. Examining this definition may help us to better understand the work being done in this laboratory.

“Quantum Voltage” was the descriptor printed on a nameplate hanging by an office in this area. As my mind wrestled with this abstruse concept, we continued our tour and eventually passed by an office belonging to someone with the faux title “Stunt Double”. Levity and good nature abounded throughout the NIST facility and among everyone we met there.

Witnessing our nation’s highest level tinkerers in action at NIST Boulder made me feel quite proud and gave me a sense of well-being. Above the fray of alarmist talk about national security, energy dependence, food safety and other issues, hundreds of dedicated scientists calmly go to work every day and apply science and engineering for altruistic purposes on our behalf.

Special thanks to Dr. Karen Tkaczyk for arranging this tour! We also owe a debt of gratitude to our tour guide, James Burrus, Public Information Officer for NIST Boulder. He did an excellent job of making the mysteries of NIST accessible to all of us.

Dana Scruggs is a German-to-English technical translator who had the good fortune of living in Boulder, CO during her collegiate years at the University of Colorado. Her business Web site is: www.DSTranslations.com

Conference Session Review: SOP Bubbles Galore and "Aha" Moments

2010-11-18T11:28:00.000-08:00

Review by Valérie Chataignier

Seminar C: From Soap to Drugs and Back, via Quality Assurance & Standard
Operating Procedures; Dr. Karen Tkaczyk

Dr. Karen Tkaczyk deftly polymerized a number of topics across the diverse domains of her cosmetic/pharmaceutical/chemical experience from the perspective of the technical translator. Seminar C, “From Soap to Drugs and Back via QA and SOPs,” held Wednesday morning at the ATA Conference in the "Mile High" city of Denver was indeed a refreshing overview and cross-section of this broad industry.

Conjuring up the trials and tribulations in translating handwritten records and tackling terminological obstacles, she emphasized strengthening one’s field-specific research techniques, finding images on the Internet, and conferring with colleagues when in doubt. Dr. Tkaczyk’s sparkling presentation cleared up technical terminology and writing style and included a generous hand-out list of resources and references for the chemical industry.

Concepts across the spectrum of methodologies and equipment used in the cosmetic/chemical industry were covered in Part I. Here, Dr. T. succinctly clarified complicated technology and concepts with extraordinary effervescent clarity, making transparent both theory and application for a wide range of laboratory and manufacturing instrumentation. Enriched with more sources and references, Part II was an overview of QA/QC, the product review process, document control, scale-up, and production complete with colorful anecdotes and helpful pointers.

In essence, Dr. Tkaczyk gave a vibrant and colorful presentation that non-comedogenically stocked the translator’s shelf with aids for "clarifying, foaming, solubilizing, and emulsifying" away the blocks and impediments to quality technical translation.

Valérie E. Châtaignier has been a freelance French to English (US) translator specializing in biomedicine and the life sciences since 2001. After six years of service and training in the U.S. Navy at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, she worked for several years as a clinical/research chemist and now resides in the "Silicon Valley" of Northern California. Valerie holds bachelor degrees in Zoology and Microbiology/Medical Technology and an M.S. in Environmental Science and Policy. When not translating she enjoys long hikes in the redwoods or reading French literature by a fire, both with chihuahua "Étoile" at her side. vchataigne@aol.com

Conference Update

2010-10-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

We're having a great time in Denver. There have been two highlights for me: the pre-conference tour of NIST (it was described as 'geek heaven' by one attendee!) and the division's annual meeting, where an enthusiastic group of about twenty people discussed our areas of expertise and what we can provide and share to help one another, and the division, grow.
In the following weeks we will post more about that, along with reviews of sessions of interest to our division.
Karen

From the 51st ATA Annual Conference in Denver.

2010-10-26T22:51:00.000-07:00

From the 51st ATA Annual Conference in Denver. We’re looking forward to the pre-conference Seminars on Wednesday, Oct 27. Especially Seminar C From Soap to Drugs and Back via Quality Assurance and Standard Operating Procedures, Karen m. Tkaczyk; Seminar D Nuts and Bolts: A Visit from the Entrance Gate to the Dispatch Dock of an Industrial Plant, Paulo Lopes and Seminar G Biomedical Translation Seminar, Damián Vázquez

Translation and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Gary Smith

2010-10-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

Having begun my translation work through engineering (nearly twenty years ago in an industrial research centre), I have often faced suspicion from linguists who wonder what on earth I’m doing "invading their territory". However, when faced with translations on nuclear reactors or catalytic converters these people grudgingly accept that I can translate texts they themselves won’t touch. That said, this suspicion is mutual; I have also faced it from engineers who wonder why they need a translator ("what do linguists know about bridge construction?"). These attitudes give rise to misconceptions such as the myth that "good grammar doesn’t matter in technical texts". It is a sobering thought that a misplaced comma in the emergency procedures for a nuclear power station or an aircraft maintenance manual could have catastrophic results. But who is "qualified" to translate such texts? A monolingual nuclear engineer? A scientifically illiterate linguist? My aim with this article is to reverse the negative attitude of certain linguists towards scientists "invading their turf" and encourage them to do likewise – "invade" the area of science, where there is good money to be made and you are needed, whatever some engineers may tell you.

Firstly, let me stress that people who master different languages are by definition intelligent people, and therefore perfectly capable of learning new subjects, especially if they decide to specialize. And the wide world of science has enormous possibilities for specializing in something you like (astronomy, the environment, marine biology, medicine, sustainable architecture, antique motorcycle maintenance…). The problem is that many who have only studied linguistics believe that this is an esoteric world of microbiology druids whose secretive terminology is accessible only to a chosen few. This is a strange attitude in people who boast of having a greater vocabulary than most.

This was brought home to me when a translator friend of mine saw a text I was working on about the isomerization of certain compounds. She burst out laughing, finding it incomprehensible. Where to look? Which bilingual specialized scientific dictionary to use? If you have an ordinary, medium-sized monolingual dictionary at hand, look up the word "isomer" now. (If not, check the Wiki). Go on, I’ll give you a few seconds while I wait… Found it? Surprised that such a word exists in any old run-of-the-mill dictionary? You should be – after all, you are a translator and should therefore find no surprises in such a dictionary. (Take note, by the way – for scientific translation you will need a monolingual dictionary. There is little point knowing that isomer in Spanish is isómero if you still have no idea what the word means in your own language). My point is, science is not so mysterious nor the texts so difficult as you may think at first. In fact, you’ll probably find that the average 15-year-old high school student is familiar with isomers, as you yourself probably were at that age before your linguistic specialization led you to forget half the things you learned at school. This is a common drawback in education in the developed world. Again, it works both ways – I once had an engineering client who didn’t know what an adjective is. This may explain why many believe that there are no Da Vincis or Aristotles around today, which is quite untrue – they just specialize now. I myself know a production engineer for a multinational glass manufacturer who studied fine arts, and a globetrotting troubleshooter for the cement industry with a degree in philosophy. As translators, we are condemned to be cultivated and always win at Trivial Pursuit – but there’s a piece of the pie to be won too if you wish to show just how cultivated you truly are. Science is also culture, and it changes the world and society far more than any poet, politician or preacher. And it therefore provides a seemingly infinite amount of texts to be translated.

To my mind, there are two very distinct kinds of text: scientific and technical. The former are usually of a standard layout – abstract, method, results, conclusions and bibliography, rounded off by effusive acknowledgements for the translator, preferably with your e-mail address. These are often written by academics with fairly good linguistic competence, to be published in international journals. Technical translations, on the other hand, can provide more problems and should be taken with some humor if you are not to end up banging your head against your keyboard and sobbing loudly. They are often written by private company technicians with scant regard for such trifles as commas and full stops/periods.

A classic example is provided by instructions manuals. One may well be mistaken for thinking that everybody reads instructions manuals in the same way. Nothing could be further from the truth; even cultural issues come into play. Let us take the example of the mobile/cell phone manual, a technical text which we are probably all familiar with and which some of you may even have actually bothered to read. In Mediterranean and Latin countries, the procedure after purchasing a mobile/cell phone is as follows:

1- Open box.

2- Throw away pesky bits of paper (i.e. instructions manual and guarantee).

3- Proceed to fiddle with buttons and moveable parts for 10 days until:

a) you realize you don’t know how the phone works.

b) you receive an electric shock.

c) the phone breaks.

4- Look for instructions manual (being chewed by cat/dog and/or at bottom of bin).

5. Discover phone is indeed broken and/or parts are missing and/or is in fact an electric razor.

6. Look for guarantee.

7. Discover 10-day trial period has now expired.

8. Curse manufacturer.

In colder climes, however, the procedure can be quite different:

1- Open box.

2- Proceed to read instructions manual step-by-step for 10 days.

3- Take phone out of cellophane. (Keep cellophane out of reach of children as instructed.)

4- See points 5 to 8 above.

The point is, instructions are read differently depending on who reads them, and this affects how they should be written. In warmer climes people often skip "boring bits" and prefer to discover the product for themselves, using the instructions only as a reference when they come across something they don’t understand. This implies avoiding the use of pronouns or references to other sections, even if you end up being repetitive. Technical texts are not meant to be works of art, but to be unequivocal and unambiguous. Indeed, many of the rules that should be applied to instructions manuals can be applied to legal texts too.

Apart from cultural preferences, there may also be other reasons for skipping points. Take emergency procedures. All companies have two possible emergency procedures in the event of a fire, for example. Let us call them plan ‘a’ and plan ‘b’. Plan ‘a’ involves following a well-rehearsed drill and assembling staff at a pre-arranged meeting point. Plan ‘b’ involves racing round like headless chickens, arms flailing, screaming for dear life. Unfortunately, when people’s lives are in imminent danger, it is plan ‘b’ that prevails.

So let us imagine a fire breaks out in a factory. Our hapless hero worker seizes an extinguisher and begins to read the instructions with understandably great haste:

1- Congratulations on purchasing your X-300 fire extinguisher, the top of the range bla bla bla.

A ball of flame flares up, searing the seat of their pants.

2- Ensure this apparatus is cleaned every two months according to European guideline 1:2002 F. Begin by carefully applying a damp cloth etc.

As the hair on the back of their neck begins to singe, they will obviously move quickly on to point 10:

10- Connect the former to the latter and turn in the same direction as in point 5.

At this point the worker wisely decides to wield the extinguisher as a hefty weapon with life-or-death ferocity, mercilessly beating a ruthless warpath through the pack of panic-stricken people blocking the emergency exit (indicated in diagram ‘f’ of emergency procedure appendix II). At least it came in handy.

Clearly, essential points should be brief and come first, points 1 and 2 should come later if at all in publicly visible emergency instructions, and full nouns should be used rather than "former" and "latter". Again, one should avoid references to other points that may have been omitted by the reader.

Such rules when writing technical texts and instructions can be found in "controlled languages" created artificially for this very purpose. These are used in multinational joint ventures where people from many countries are involved and where English is used as the common language but the employees’ grasp of this language is not perfect. One such example is ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English. They include rules such as avoidance of the passive voice, keeping sentences short and always using an article. Such rules, while helping to prevent misunderstandings, inevitably lead to a repetitive style, which in turn leads to a high degree of translation memory fuzzy matches. This fact has not been lost on some companies that have even produced controlled languages with this in mind (Caterpillar and CLOUT).

One more tip on translating technical texts – find pictures! To fully understand the parts of a ship, the cross-section of a road or the workings of a machine, the "Images" search you can make in Google is priceless, not to mention picture dictionaries such as the Merriam-Webster online. And what better example of a picture dictionary than an encyclopedia? And what better example of an encyclopedia than Saint Wiki? Obviously, the Wikipedia should not be used as a reference for correct terminology, but as a learning tool it is unbeatable, especially if you need to understand scientific texts. But first perhaps it is necessary to explain just how to use it – and how not to.

The Wikipedia is a site that depends entirely on contributions – both in terms of financing and information. The articles are written by volunteers, which should obviously set alarm bells ringing as to its reliability as a dictionary. Sometimes you’ll find a symbol next to the language that has been defined as a "good article" (often in German), and the site applies a "verifiability" policy which means that all pages should cite sources whose reliability you can then check. So why use it at all? Well, its reliability is proportional to the simplicity of the subject matter, due to its democratic form of editing. For example, if you decide to write an article about kangaroos, saying that they are a kind of gigantic mollusk that lives in the Arctic Ocean, it will immediately be removed by Wikepedians with more authoritative knowledge than yours on the world’s fauna, not least because they have a "no original research" policy and the idea of huge polar mollusks is, well, quite original. If, however, you decide to give the world the benefit of your meager knowledge about erythropoiesis in hemopoietic tissue, there will be far fewer people qualified to dispute you if you affirm that it is caused, say, by ingesting huge Arctic gastropods (though you’ll have to provide prior research into the phenomenon, which could be tricky). In other words, the Wikipedia is the Sesame Street of Science. It’s where Grover explains isomers to you, and in this respect it does indeed work and can be an invaluable self-learning tool.

Another important point to note about the Wiki is that the texts in different languages are written by different authors who usually bear absolutely no relation to each other. In other words, the texts are different and this may even lead to slightly differing definitions.

One trick to help check the names of flora and fauna is to look for the Latin name which scientists have generally agreed on to find the corresponding common name in each respective language. Again, double-check with official sites other than the Wiki. It is a curious fact that in certain scientific respects Latin is still the most widely used language (and some may argue that it still is in a wider sense through its daughter languages). A similar tip applies to chemical nomenclature. Find the chemical notation for a compound and you can find its name in another language – but beware of isomers! The chemical notation can also change slightly from Asian to European languages. You can also look up the International Non-Proprietary Names (INN) for chemicals at the WHO, with their corresponding official translations, to avoid prosecution from companies that have patented a chemical product (similar considerations should be applied to technical translations).

While my intention with this article is to encourage translators to delve into science, I must obviously stress that you should not attempt to translate texts that you honestly do not understand. All I’m saying is that before you reject a job upon seeing the title alone, give yourself fifteen minutes to check it out first and see if it really is as difficult as you thought at first. You may surprise yourself; maybe even Grover can understand it. That said, obviously medical texts, for example, should be left to the experts. Nevertheless, if this subject interests you, make yourself an expert by studying official courses for translators on the matter. The same goes for perhaps the most difficult of all subjects to translate: mathematical texts. These also require sound understanding. By no means do I advise anybody to try to bluff their way through the translation of a text they if haven’t really understood why the Dirac delta is not strictly a function since it should have total integral zero. I’d like to see Grover try to explain that…

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Editor's Welcome to the ATA SciTech Division Blog, by Stephanie Delozier Strobel

2010-10-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

How interesting that Steve Marzuola’s September, 22, 2010 post to the SciTech list would refer to Aristotle and rhetoric in relation to PhD programs in Technical writing. Our next article to be posted to the ATA SciTech blog also refers to philosophy. We technical translators are privileged to be possessed of two minds or perspectives, technical and linguistic. From reading Blaise Pascal, I came away with an impression of these two minds as being géometrique and romantique. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the perspectives are named Classical and Romantic.

It is fairly unusual in the U.S. to possess linguistic skills in two or more languages. It is also prized to be technically adept. These two strengths are often characterized as polar opposites or as mutually exclusive. I’m excited to participate in the new SciTech division because here is where our unusual, yet like, minds meet.

I have my own take on the concept of two minds. I think those of us who approach things first and foremost from a technical perspective, we feel physics; we think in pictures. As opposed to a poet friend of mine, who has a master’s degree and is romantique to the extreme; she thinks in words. More than once she has told me she just didn’t get physics. One day at the beach I saw what she meant as she tried (repeatedly!) to unfurl her towel at the beach while facing into the wind. Shocked speechless, I gently grasped her shoulders and turned her to stand with her back to the wind. Having regained my tongue, I said “Try now.” The beach towel unfurled crisply. With off-handed thanks, my friend Ann began to settle various objects onto her towel. Despite being physics-challenged, Ann is a cherished proofreader. Perhaps there is hope for her yet.

In response to the Gary Smith’s article “Translation and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, I personally have no issues with identifying adjectives. However, when the linguists at the ATA conference start talking postpositional or nominative it makes me sweat.

Besides feeling physics, we of the technical persuasion may crunch numbers, enjoy a good logical challenge and investigate phenomena. Being translators though, by default, we must work in the romantic region of language.

When a translator doesn’t have a good feel for the technical, the translation is a bit disoriented. A translator who does not benefit from possessing both the technical and romantic perspectives might render a Picasoesque phrase such as “the rate of work of the floor” when to an esprit géométrique it is obviously a “soil modulus”. It has been said, “Nothing is obvious to the uninitiated.” Gary Smith’s article encourages the uninitiated to delve into the technical and become familiar with technical subjects.

Words and grammar compose the verbal erector set we use. As translators and technical writers we will encourage and accompany each other as we work to advance skills for technical writing and technical translation.

A few words about our SciTech Division and Blog:

When I stop to think about it, I find the advances in communication technology mindboggling. I remember getting goose bumps when a drawing from the design office in California was printing out at my nuclear power plant in New Jersey. With technology such as the Internet, webcams and online conferencing, we are living parts of Star Trek here and now. Hearken back to my days as an engineer in an office full of engineers (slaving for ‘the man’) in the days before email and the Internet (I date myself). When someone had a question, he would stand up and broadcast the question over the tops of our cubicles. Anyone within earshot could pop up and provide an answer or guidance. I see the SciTech Division as sort of a Cosmic Cubicle where we may not have the physical proximity, but through technology we share the same communal immediacy.

In this spirit I’m broadcasting a call for articles. Hey, guys! (In the greater Philadelphia area “guys” may be used to address a group of people regardless of gender.) Please let me know if you are interested in reviewing the SciTech Division presentations at the ATA National Conference. The reviews will be posted on this blog. Contact me at sds@strobelengineering.com to tell me which session you would like to review.

Other articles would be very welcome and can be sent to me at sds@strobelengineering.com.

Stephanie Delozier Strobel, ATA SciTech Division Blog Editor

Events at the Denver annual conference - part 1 - Wednesday

2010-09-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

Another post will follow on the core conference sessions, but for now this is a summary of Wednesday's events that might be of interest.

Morning: Three seminars look like they will be specifically of relevance to technical translators, depending on your field and language.
The first one session is language neutral, and it's mine. If you're not sure whether this would be useful for you, just ask and I'll give you more information.

Seminar C
From Soap to Drugs and Back, via Quality Assurance and Standard Operating Procedures
Karen M. Tkaczyk, PhD, CT

This second one looks great if you work with Portuguese.
Seminar D
Nuts and Bolts: A Visit from the Entrance Gate to the Dispatch Dock of an Industrial Plant
Paulo Lopes

The third one is in Spanish will be relevant to tech translators who work with biotech and medical devices.
Seminar G
Biomedical Translation Seminar
Damián Vázquez

Afternoon: Tour of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, NIST
We have arranged a site tour of the Boulder laboratory from 2-4pm. We have asked for a few specific labs to visit, which are as follows, though that won't be finalized until shortly beforehand. There is a list of 20 or so interesting labs to choose from, should any of these be unavailable that day.
Atomic clock
Biofuels
Detecting explosives
Clean rooms and quantum devices
Hydrogen pipeline testing

Evening: Division Open House 7-8pm
We will be at the Science and Technology division area during this reception to answer any questions. Desserts and coffee will be provided free of charge by ATA.

Review of the International Technical Translation Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, by Karen Tkaczyk

2010-08-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

Tower of Babel
Thirty-six nationalities were represented by the 200 translators present at this two-day conference held in Lisbon on 28-29 May 2010. That alone made it a stimulating environment for any member of the T&I community, even before we consider the technical sessions. English was the language of almost all of the sessions, but the hallways and meeting areas exhibited great diversity. Conversations were sometimes held in several languages at once, it seemed. Many English dialects were represented, from both southern and northern hemispheres. There were people from many European countries and from most of the Portuguese speaking countries. There was also a delegation from China.
TradulÍnguas is developing a reputation for putting on excellent conferences. Organizers João Roque Dias and Lina Gameiro had been very responsive and well-organized in the run up to the event, and it ran very smoothly, so they and their team are to be congratulated. It is worth mentioning that the coffee breaks, on-campus lunches, and conference dinner improved the overall experience in giving us a flavor of Portugal. Delicious ‘pastéis’, Portuguese pastries, were served during the breaks, and a lively, (dare I say loud, perhaps even boisterous as the evening wore on!) conference dinner was held at a location within easy walking distance of our hotels. I would highly recommend future TradulÍnguas events.
So what did I learn?
I had chosen to attend because of the specialized technical content, and combined it with a visit to my parents in the UK. I am a highly-specialized technical translator, and I crave good training in the area. It is not easy to find such training, even if you are willing to travel. Medical translation, legal translation, even financial translation, are commonly catered for. Technical translation is not often the focus of conferences. Since this one sold out and had a waiting list, it suggests to me that there is a market for other similar events.
I arrived with decisions to make, as the program was two-track apart from keynote speakers. We had good choices available, as each time slot had a session on a technical subject, then there were other options on building your business and terminology management, for example, for those who wanted a more general program. There were sessions that were of direct relevance to my work, and several that were not directly relevant but left me with a sense of satisfaction afterwards. I felt ‘well-fed’ intellectually after the two days.
My conference began with a member of the in-house translation department at CERN in Geneva, Mathilde Fontanet, speaking on the common difficulties of translating technical English. Oh, those noun pairs! As well as the huge value to the obvious ‘out of English’ audience, there was a lot of food for thought for those of us who work into English.
UN translator Prof. Marie-Josée de Saint Robert gave an excellent session on how terminology must be defined within the UN, in her case for work into French. It was an eye-opener to see how decisions must be made. I think it is best explained by an example, which I hope I relate faithfully. In one area of automotive technology (as I recall the context was anti-lock brakes) manufacturers were using a variety of phrases to describe a new technological concept in English. The equivalent French phrase had to be defined for a new standard, and a study was made of the French phrases in common use. It was then important to consider whether those phrases were used exclusively by one auto-maker. Selecting that phrase would not do! So not only was the meaning of the terms important, but the accepted phrasing in the industry and the degree to which a phrase was accepted by only a part of the industry, before selecting an ‘official’ French translation.
I was looking forward to a session on translation for technical journalism, as it is an area in which I wish to develop my skills. This is difficult work, as the translator must have both the technical skill set and be able to write excellent marketing copy. Presenter Steve Dyson met my expectations and may be the only translator I have ever met who is more narrowly specialized than me! His narrow area is translation of naval defense related subject matter for that industry’s professionals, and his discussion of the issues involved in marketing technical subject matter was the highlight of the conference for me. His technique is emulation, and he immerses himself in that industry’s publications to build up his expertise.
A Belgian professor from University of Mons, Viviane Grisez, gave us a great session on how French scientists usually write English papers, giving insight into what to look out for in the area of revising English texts written by non-native speakers, which is a reasonably large field for scientific translators like me. Major areas of consideration were modal verbs and tense use, then other smaller issues that we all recognize were mentioned, such as hyphenation, or the difference between ‘make’ and ‘do’, and the dreaded ‘realize’.
There were a number of sessions on specific technical areas including high speed rail, bearings, my own session on the chemical industry, and a very popular session on translating manuals. There were also a number of more general sessions on tools, terminology and building a business. Renato Beninatto gave a lively presentation on the state of the translation industry and how old we all were – literally, but more importantly figuratively, in how we think about the business and they way it may change in the near future. The conference ended with sessions from the head of the Portuguese team at the European Commission, and the last Q&A was a lively one that scratched the surface of the current ferocious debate on the potential reform of the Portuguese language.
And back to work
This was a stimulating, well-run conference where I met many interesting people. It left me enthusiastic about my chosen niche in the profession, and eager to return to work. There was even an added bonus! When I returned home and looked at the CD-Rom I saw it was chock-full of solid reference material in addition to the presentations. This was a superb professional development event.

The author is an ATA-certified French to English translator working in chemistry and its industrial applications and IP. She is the current Acting-Administrator of the Science and Technology Division.

The Unending Quest for Terminology and Style in Technical Translation, by John Rock

2010-08-20T20:20:00.000-07:00

Two things happened recently. First, I had cause to translate a job on textiles, and second, I edited a job on cherry-pickers— you know those truck mounted mobile platforms which maintenance crews use to work at height.
The two jobs could not be more different, but in a strange way they were related.
Early on in the textile job, I realized that my technical dictionary resources had next to nothing on textiles. This is not surprising since most dictionaries are at least 10 years out of date and the majority of them anywhere from 20 to 50 years out of date. I was way out beyond the dictionary.
Fortunately, I had a reference source bequeathed to me by a friend, and after slogging through the 20 or so pages on modern textile manufacturing, I was a little more confident. I still had to do a large amount of terminology research, but I felt on firmer ground.
As an object lesson, if not a real eye-opener, I thought it would be interesting to share with you the subjects covered in the various chapters of this book on Industrial Chemical Processes. They are: Water Treatment and Environmental Protection; Energy, Fuels, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration; Carbon Based Chemical Products; Combustible Gases; Industrial Gases; Industrial Coal; Ceramics Industry; Portland Cement, Calcium and Magnesium Compounds; Sodium Chloride and other Sodium Compounds; Chlorine and Alkalis Industry: Soda Ash, Caustic Soda and Chlorine; Electrolytic Industries; Electrothermal Industries; Phosphorus Industries; Potassium Industries; Nitrogen Industries; Sulfur and Sulfuric acid; Hydrochloric Acid and Miscellaneous Inorganic Compounds; Nuclear Industries; Explosives, Toxic Chemical Agents and Propellants; Photographic Products Industries; Paint and Pigments Industries; Food and Co-Products Industries; Agricultural Chemicals Industries; Perfumes, Fragrances and Food Additives; Oil, Fats and Waxes, Soaps and Detergents;
Sugar and Amide Industries; Fermentation Industries; Chemical Derivatives from Wood;
Pulp and Paper Industries; Plastics Industries; Synthetic Fiber and Films Industries; Rubber Industries; Petroleum Refining; Petrochemicals; Intermediates, Dyes and their applications; Pharmaceutical Industries.
This yields a total of thirty-eight sub-specialties within the general field of Industrial Chemical Processing. Most merit whole books to themselves, rather than one meager chapter. Some smart readers will note that the list is not exhaustive.
So the question remains, how is a technical translator supposed to represent him/herself when confronted with such material? They may have in-depth experience in a handful of fields and possibly passing experience in a handful more, but certainly not in the whole gamut. Yet that is what the client wants – in depth experience in such and such an industry.
What is a translator to do? One translator told me quite candidly that one technical translation is much like the next – it is all junk. Could it be that this particular translator did not understand the material and simply plugged in the terminology without thinking, like a cookie dough recipe?
At the same time you can be brutally honest and say that you have never translated this kind of material, but that you have translated lots of similar material. After all, a great deal of industrial processing equipment is similar from one specialization to another. You might stand a chance of landing the job over someone less qualified than you are. However, you are going invest a lot of time in terminology research, and remember, nobody is perfect.
Then there are also the supremely over-confident translators, the ones who claim that they do not need a dictionary to translate. I find such statements extremely hard to digest without a ton of salt.

So we come to the editing of the cherry-picker translation. I happen to know the job required Trados. Now I am not a big fan of Trados and make no secret of the fact. I think it encourages mindless translation by translators who should not be venturing into the swamp in the first place. After all, what can go wrong? You have a TM for all your terminology needs. And hopefully the TM has been vetted by the client. Or has it? Is the client competent to determine the correct terminology? I have seen awful gaffes.
Or has the TM ever been edited? Has the terminology been created by some equally bold and audacious translator who has made a stab at the unknown terms? Because let’s face it, anyone following in their footsteps through the bog is certainly not going to change the TM unless they are absolutely certain it is wrong, and maybe not even then. A lot of clients get really upset if you change the TM and are happy to remain blissfully ignorant and allow the errors to propagate from translation to translation.
I have known some translation agencies that simply dump every translation in a given language pair, irrespective of the subject material, into a giant TM, so large it will not fit onto the average PC. Now is that a recipe for disaster, or what?
But by far the biggest problem with something like Trados is that it fragments the context of the translation into segments where the translator loses sight of its relationship of one phrase to the context as a whole. It is not just a case of fitting a square peg into a round hole, but finding the precise shape and size of the peg that fits the hole.
I myself have done it more than once. “Okay that fits – send it on its way.” Upon closer inspection of the surrounding text, it demands a different translation.
I have already talked about being beyond dictionaries with many technical translations. “First come – first plugged,” simply does not work. Often the term you are looking for may be the last in a long list, and you have to know in what subject context it is used. Otherwise you might commit the faux-pas of using terminology from a completely different industry.
This demands something which was sorely lacking in the cherry-picker translation – the human thought process.
I have on occasion preached that good technical translation uses a “connect the dots approach.” Truly, I prefer the more colorful description “the thigh bone connects to the knee bone- the knee bone connects to the shin bone- the shin bone connects to the ankle bone.”. If you do not know what you are translating or have only a vague clue, then you might need a diagram to help you out. It would not be the first time I have scrambled through a pictorial dictionary.
Thus Trados gives you the dots but very little connectivity. And if someone has translated one of the dots incorrectly, it can throw you for a loop.
In another example of the fragmentation effect, I was asked, as it so often the case, to translate first the graphics to a fairly complicated translation so the DTP people could do their magic. But after the translation was finished I had to go back and change the translation of the graphics. I did not make any friends.
I am not trying to be overly critical. We all have to learn, and you cannot gain the experience without translating the material. But when the translation comes out disjointed and does not make sense, and it is up to the editor to rescue it; then it is clear that the translator has put the minimum of thought into it and deserves a reprimand.
The whole point is that translation, and especially technical translation requires thought. No matter how experienced you are, or how many dictionaries you have, you are going to come across a translation where you are beyond the dictionary and will be thrown back on your own resources. That is our unending quest, to provide just the right terminology by falling back on the well of our experience.
Translation unencumbered by the human thought process is not translation, but instead, junk.

For pure chemistry, the author uses a McGraw Hill Chemical dictionary and a Penguin Dictionary, which he prefers. John Rock is an ATA certified Portuguese into English translator who works in a wide variety of fields, including oil and gas, geology, applied and natural sciences and patents.

2010-08-19T07:28:00.000-07:00

Here is the very first post for the new ATA Science and Technology Division blog. It's a short one, just to get us started. The team who asked ATA to approve this division thought that a blog would be more valuable to division members than a twice-yearly newsletter. Stephanie Strobel volunteered to be the blog editor, so all suggested submissions should be sent to her at sds at strobelengineering dot com. We want to encourage all division members to submit posts. Long, article types will be approved by ATA before posting. Short ones like this just get reviewed by Stephanie. We hope for both articles and short pieces that will be of interest to translators who work both into and out of English, and in a wide variety of technical fields.

The Science and Technology Division has about 100 members already. We look forward to hearing from you. Please add a comment to tell us what you would like to see here.