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How to prepare a technical text for translation

The material for our article is traditionally based on the working situations of our everyday life. Over the last six months, the number of authors of scientific articles, monograms and other publications has increased significantly among our customers. Materials of Russian scientists and specialists in foreign languages are actively appearing in international industry magazines.

When the author himself is the customer for translation of a scientific text, the translators’ task becomes several times more complicated.

Publications are preceded by translation. And it is not always easy.

Authors’ fears are understandable; unsatisfactory translation poses serious risks to their reputation. Most often there are two negative consequences:

• The publication will refuse to publish, or add to the “black” list altogether;
• Foreign colleagues will misunderstand the scientific work.

Let us try to give advice on how you can prepare a text for translation to reduce such risks.

An author who has put his heart into his text, diligently diluting boring technical characteristics with vivid comparisons and allegories, wants his work to sound just as good in a foreign language. But this is often an impossible task for a translator who does not know enough about the topic to convey the “expression” of scientific data.

Simple text = good translation

If you are in the business of writing texts to be translated into English, be aware that the author’s ornate wording and syntax will cause problems for the translator. Without your detailed consultation, the translation is unlikely to be adequate. Often such collaboration is impossible, even if writers and translators work in the same office – not enough time.

There is at least one customer that encourages interaction between these categories of employees – Yandex. We mention the IT company here not for advertising, but as an example. Yandex shared its experience in organizing technical translation at the Hyperbaton conference for programmers.

This paper collects observations of our company’s technical translators and editors who directly encounter “unscientific” texts that are far from the typical syntax of the English language. Based on the observations, simple and understandable tips are offered on how to “lighten”, “comb” and simplify the text for translation.

“Why?” – you ask.

Why rework an already “brilliant” text?

Let technical translators handle it themselves – they are professionals. The problem is not to make someone’s life easier. The goal is to make your work, article, report readable in a foreign language. With terms that are uniform for understanding. Without ambiguous sentences, florid expressions and excessive professional vocabulary.

Think about foreign colleagues, workers in your field. As it is noticed in practice, 98% of English-language articles by native speakers and those who do not have English as their native language are written in the simplest language. No one, with rare exceptions, if the subject of the article requires it, does not describe sentences on 5 – 10 lines, does not use piles of phrases that are hard to comprehend. Foreign authors strive for important things in science: to be correctly understood, to invite “colleagues in the field” to a scientific dialog, to get a response. This is what the development of science is all about.

Do not consider the preparation of a technical text for translation as extra work. “Not in service, but in friendship” follow the recommendations and revise the text. You will see that even in Russian it will be easier to read.

Six golden rules

The recommendations are in two parts: what to do and what to exclude.

First, observe the direct word order. Reverse or random word order, typical for the Russian language, is inappropriate for scientific and technical texts.

Note: only adverbs (circumstance of place, time and mode of action) can have a free arrangement – at the beginning or at the end of the sentence.

Second, this may seem like an odd piece of advice, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. Make sure that the thought is built logically, without unexpected additions, appendices, lyrical digressions, complex de-private turns. Here, as an indispensable attribute of the statement – the thought should be complete. Avoid “Brezhnev’s” phrases – jumping from one to another, dragging out the statement. As a result of reading such a chain, you forget where the thought began. For the translator, this is hard labor, and there is a great risk of missing the connection between the elements of the sentence and distorting the meaning.

Third, avoid the phrases “on account of” and the preposition “by”. Let’s dwell on the latter in more detail: “The paper presents the results of research to determine the effect on the values of detonation characteristics…”. This sentence is divided into two:

1. The research was conducted.
2. The results of the research are given in the paper.

This “by” is often impossible to convey in English, you have to twist and paraphrase. Help the translator – do it for him. Who, but you, knows the subject of the text better?

Or here’s another one: “At enterprise N, work was carried out to create…” replace it with “created…”. Simple as that!

Fourth, avoid chains of three or more nouns in a row in the genitive case. In English, there are no such Russian “functional” cases, only possessive (which is expressed with an apostrophe and an s). There are nominative and “general” (when a noun or pronoun is not in the nominative case, i.e. not as a subject), and both without case endings. Therefore, it is impossible to convey the relationship of these three or more consecutive nouns. And if the translator does figure out what relates to what, the phrase will sound terrible in English. For example: “the velocity of the ablation front on the surface of the material.” Did you feel that?

Fifth, don’t complicate the structure of the phrase: instead of “conduct verification activities”, write “verify”.

Sixth, there are tricky moments with participial turns, especially if there is more than one in a sentence. In Russian it is easier – you can understand what refers to what by the gender and case of the main word and the participle itself, which retains these features. In English, however, there are no such “markers”. The way out is to use no more than one turn in a sentence, to put the participle turn immediately after the definite word, so that the connection is obvious: “desperate measures that require considerable investment”. Or make “scales” to use two turns: first the turn, then the definite word, its predicate and complements, the other definite word and its turn.

Nothing new to recommend:

• avoid sentences that are too long;
• avoid stream of consciousness;
• avoid ambiguous sentences that the reader will understand ambiguously;
• divide long sentences into 2-3 short ones.

There are lexical units that at first glance seem difficult to translate. But these are the ones that are easier to translate in English: “with the help of”, “depending on”, “on the basis of”, passive voice because of the frequency in English compared to Russian (“the tension was analyzed/tested by changing the angle of inclination”).

Obviously, the writers do not know the peculiarities of the English language and technical translation into English. For this reason, they cannot predict which structure will cause difficulty for the translator, and which, on the contrary, will be helpful. For this reason, this article presents collected observations that will help you to cross the geographical boundaries of science at ease.

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