Today technical translation is perhaps the most demanded service of a translation agency. In all likelihood, the reason for this is the fact that almost all technical equipment in the Russian Federation is imported. In this regard, both distributors and consumers need high-quality translations of operating instructions, user manuals and other technical documents from foreign languages into Russian for each imported item.
Correct technical translation requires not only knowledge of specialized terminology in a given field of science and technology, but also an understanding of the meaning of a specific text. This means that a technical translator must have a clear understanding of the technological processes described in the text, the design of the product, and the principles of its operation. In this regard, not only linguists are involved in the translation of technical texts, but also specialists with technical education who are competent in a specific field of science and technology, for example, specialists in radio electronics and IT are involved in working on texts related to radio equipment and computer technology, and geophysicists - for the translation of technical documentation in the field of geological exploration, oil and gas production.
Foreign scientific and technical publications and documents translated by linguists who do not have knowledge of specific areas of technology and are not able to fully understand the meaning of the material being translated often become objects of ridicule by technical specialists, mainly due to the curiosities of translation. In the worst case, an incorrect translation of the instructions for production equipment can cause an accident or even a large-scale accident at the enterprise and cost people health and lives.
It follows that the reliability, correctness and literacy of a technical translation can only be guaranteed if the translation is performed by a specialist who has deep knowledge in a specific technical area and thoroughly understands the industry's "subtleties".
Difficulties and characteristics of technical translations
Translation of technical topics is distinguished by an accurate and unambiguous presentation of the meaning of the original text in the target language. Lack of uniformity of terminology or logic of constructing sentences, the possibility of different interpretations of the text are not allowed.
All technical translations made in our agency are subject to obligatory editing before the text is handed over to the customer. The cost of editing a technical text is included in the cost of the translation service.
The strategy of the Azbuka translation bureau is to build strong long-term relationships with customers of technical translation. Long-term cooperation with clients allows us to understand much better their specific requirements, to better understand the nuances of using special terminology in a specific technical field, and thereby guarantee a high quality of translation.
The Azbuka Translation Bureau works with technical texts in the following areas:
Technical translation in the shortest possible time (urgent translation of technical texts)
The standard volume of text performed by one technical translator within one day is up to 10 accounting pages. It is preferable for the entire text to be translated by one specialist - this allows you to ensure uniformity of terminology and consistency in the presentation of information. However, a situation may arise in which the customer will need to translate the text of a technical subject in the shortest possible time. In this case, several translators and an editor are involved in the implementation of the project, ensuring the quality of the collaboration. You can get acquainted with the cost of urgent translation on this page.
You can order a technical translation from English into Russian, as well as translations from / to other language pairs, by phone, by e-mail or by placing an order through an online application. In the latter case, we will definitely contact you after the receipt of the application in order to agree on the deadline, form of payment and other details.
Our managers take orders online around the clock and seven days a week
Proofreading of technical texts by a native speaker
Proofreading a technical text by a native speaker is one of the most reliable ways to improve the literary quality and readability of a translation, including a technical one.
If you already have a translation of a text on hand, which should be edited or proofread, the Azbuka translation bureau offers the service of editing / proofreading technical translation by a native speaker of the corresponding language. After professional processing, your translation will be as clear as possible to the technical specialists of the country in which you intend to use it.
When it comes to translating technical texts from a foreign language into Russian, we suggest using the services of qualified technical editors.
The Azbuka translation bureau takes over technical texts of various topics:
How we ensure the quality of technical translation
We are confident in the quality of our technical translations because:
1. We have formulated and strictly adhere to the following requirements for technical translation:
maximum accuracy of information transfer;
the use of scientific and business style of writing the text;
compliance with specific design requirements in accordance with regulatory documents.
2. Our translators performing technical translations have professional technical knowledge, understand the subject of translation and the terminology used.
3. We use translation memory systems (CAT tools) to ensure consistent terminology and maintain document structure.
4. All specialists involved in one project share the project glossary and have general access to supporting materials.
5. After the completion of the technical translation, the finished text undergoes quality control both in relation to the correctness of the translation and in relation to the compliance of the design with the original text.
In order to learn how to translate correctly, consider the algorithm for translating a text from English into Russian. The entire translation process can be roughly divided into two stages: comprehension and reproduction of the text. No matter how strange it may seem, but first you need to work with the text without dictionaries or online translators (or with minimal use of them).
The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts / George Orwell /
And only after that proceed directly to the translation.
The slovenliness of our language contributes to the appearance of stupid thoughts in us (J. Orwell)
So, more about everything.
Minimum stages of translation - plan:
1. Comprehension of the text.
First reading - familiar words - topic - style - type.
Second reading - text image
2. Reproduction of the text.
Translation - word - sentence - paragraph.
And the third reading.
Comprehension of the text
First reading.Translation experts advise: "Do not think about what you are reading in another language, try to abstract yourself and just understand the meaning of the text."
Wherein rely on familiar words... Do not rush to say that you do not know English very well. Even those who have never encountered English speech know several hundred English words. Yes it's true. These are words that came to Russian from English, for example, business, manager, merchandiser and international words that came to both English and Russian from Latin, Greek or French, for example, algebra, geography, museum, radio.
You can also check your vocabulary on special sites.
Tie familiar words into a common theme. This will facilitate translation by limiting the dictionary to a narrow circle of words, for example: home, sister, daddy, sweet ... - the subject of the text is obviously “family”. Limiting all meanings of words and phrases to a specific topic will help you in the next steps when choosing the right meaning from dozens of possible ones.
Then define the type of text:
narration (a story about any events, actions in time),
description (listing of signs or characteristics of something - an object, phenomenon, place),
reasoning (the main feature of which will be proof of something, indication of reasons, conviction of the reader or listener).
After that, find out the style of the text:
scientific (which is distinguished by the presence of terms, emphasized by the logic of presentation and the absence of emotions),
formal business (in which information is also important, there are no emotions and evaluation, but fewer terms),
journalistic style (its goal is to convince the reader, influencing him by all means - logic and emotionality),
artistic (where imagery, metaphoricality comes to the fore, and consistency and consistency are relegated to the second), and the conversational style of the text (characterized by simplicity, ease and emotion).
Second reading is aimed at forming a mental image of the text - how everything read in a foreign language can be said in your own. That is, familiar words associated with the topic, style and type of text form its image.
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Translation is a word. Find equivalents of unfamiliar words or combinations in dictionaries, based on the prevailing image of the text. the most convenient and popular dictionaries are:
lingvo-online.ru - a convenient high-quality search for words, stable combinations with them and specific examples in which this word occurs.
dic.academic.ru, the convenience of which is in finding meanings in dozens of specialized dictionaries, for example, scientific, economic, political and others.
multitran.ru is appreciated for the fact that translation options for rare words and expressions are left here by professional translators who have already encountered these words in practice. There is a live forum where you can find solutions to difficult translation situations.
For even more advanced translations, you can use explanatory dictionaries that decode, explain the meaning of an English word or expression in simpler English words: more often than others, I use urbandictionary.com - many, including the most recent, slang expressions are explained here.
You can also pay attention to dictionary.cambridge.org, thefreedictionary.com.
The choice of the meaning of words and combinations is influenced by:
1) Context.
2) Metaphors, Idioms.
3) Polysemy.
1) Context - the environment of the translated word or phrase.
For instance:
the theory of Einstein - Einstein's theory
the theory of Christ - the teaching of Christ.
One word is translated differently in different environments.
2) Metaphors, Idioms. Words and phrases in a figurative meaning are translated equivalent - in dictionaries you need to look for a whole phrase or try to understand the figurative meaning that the author has put into it.
For instance: I'll move heaven and earth to achieve my goal - I will move mountains for my goal... Look: there are no words to fold in the original at all, but we see that the sentence - "I will move heaven and earth to reach my goal."- does not sound quite Russian and we are looking for something that seems to fall out of the rest of the environment - "I will move heaven and earth"... We find that this is an idiom, a phraseological unit, and it has a specific vocabulary equivalent "I will roll mountains."
3) Polysemy. This is where the limitation of the topic, which we made earlier in the second stage, when we compiled a mental image of the text, comes in handy. Based on this image, we choose the most suitable from dozens of values.
For instance:
Some sort of religious thing? - For religious reasons?
And then he did that odd thing. - And then he did a very strange thing.
Janey looked around the room for the nearest thing with which to hit her. Janey began to scan the room for a heavy object.
By the way, the most ambiguous word in English is set, which has 127 meanings.
Ignoring these three metrics - context, figurative meaning, and ambiguity - is easy to see. Copy the text to the online translator and get technical translation- a set of words, not always connected and often meaningless. Why? Details.
Translation is a sentence. We proceed to the next stage and link familiar words and equivalents of unfamiliar ones (found in dictionaries just now) into sentences.
At the same time, remember that English has a fixed word order, in Russian it is free.
Therefore, when choosing the meaning of a word, you need to look at its place in the sentence.
In Russian: mum washed the frame - mum washed the frame - mum washed the frame.
In English: mother washed frame, frame washed mother(from a change in the order of words, the meaning changes).
Particular attention is paid to verbs. Verbs in English have a number of unique features: there are phrasal verbs (get after - to pursue, take after - to be similar, etc.), which are not in Russian.
In English there are 16 tenses (simple, long, perfect) - in Russian three.
Then we move on to composing sentences in paragraphs to express the larger idea in the text. What could not be said in one sentence, for example, a joke or an author's metaphor, can be moved to another place in the paragraph, keeping the original idea.
Finally, third reading- now of my own translation. Read the resulting text, correct all mistakes (spelling, grammatical, punctuation). In addition to the text checking function built into the Word, there are online services. For example text.ru.
In the resulting translation pay attention to the correspondence: the meaning of the text, the general theme, type, style, whether the context was taken into account in the translation, whether the author's metaphors and idioms were correctly conveyed and the meanings of polysemous words were chosen.
Very important. Before reading the resulting translation, you need to distract yourself from the text for a while. Ideally, have a cup of coffee or take a walk. The third reading should be "from the outside".
© Alexey Obzhorin, 2015
Every day in the world, many companies, individuals and organizations enter into dialogue or share information with foreign colleagues.
Most of them seek help from professional translation agencies for texts from English into Russian, which are represented in all important cities of the world. If you decide to master the skills of an English translator on your own, then this article will be especially interesting to you!
What is translation?
Translation is an important factor in bringing people and organizations closer together around the world. Etymologically, the meaning of the word "translation" means "transfer through" or "movement through".
Thus, by translating a text from English into Russian, it is possible to overcome language barriers that often impede effective communication.
Language translation is a complex process with many details, in which the translator tries to express the meaning of the text in one language by means of the second language.
In the process of converting text from English to Russian meaning should remain unchanged. Typically, the source language is referred to as the “source language” and the target language as the “target language”.
How do translators work?
Usually, people use the services of translation agencies in a large city to get a professional and high-quality translation of texts in English.
However, dealing with foreign languages is not as easy as it might seem. It would be misleading to think that translation means simply replacing words in one language with similar words in another language.
There have been cases when a person who is ignorant of translation tried to assess its quality by comparing the number of words in the original text and in the translated text. Since these numbers did not coincide (and such a coincidence, to put it mildly, is unlikely), the translation was assessed as inadequate.
A high-quality translation requires intensive research into the subject matter of the source text. In addition, the translator usually needs to have a deep knowledge of both the source and target languages.
Ideally, the translator should be a native speaker of the target language. It is important that the translator has a good understanding of the customs and lifestyle of the people for whom this translation is intended. This will allow you to more accurately convey the meaning of the text to the addressee.
It is very important that the translator of texts from English into Russian in the field of legal, medical, technical, scientific or commercial translations is a specialist in the relevant issue.
What do you need for a quality translation?
It must be remembered that translating a text from English into Russian is not just a mechanical process of translating words from one language to another.
There are many factors that must be considered in order to obtain an accurate and thematically adapted translation from English.
Here are the most important aspects that a translator should pay attention to:
- The actual context in the source and target languages. The meaning and subtext of the same concept can be very different.
- Grammatical features of the two languages. Remember that grammar, being the most important component of any language, has its own specific rules in each of them.
- Spelling in the target language is the most important factor in a quality translation. As you know, there are many spelling differences between English and American English. For example, the English word color in the American version looks like color.
- Written norms adopted for the target language. We are talking about spelling, punctuation, grammar, as well as the rules for capitalization (highlighting words in capital letters) and dividing text into paragraphs.
- Translating idioms and expressions from one language to another is often difficult. For example, a literal translation of an English phrase into any other language is unlikely to make sense.
- The use of periods and commas in writing numbers has different rules in different languages. This is important because decimal numbers are written as 1,000.01 in English. The same in Spanish is correctly written as 1.000.01.
Such details are important from the point of view of high-quality translation of texts from English into Russian.
In addition, I would like to remind you that during the translation process it is important to carefully check the translated text with the original one. Editing at different stages of the work will allow you to avoid mistakes.
To date, one of the most popular types of translation is exactly. Most of these texts are articles, reports, patents, mathematical and physical calculations, instructions for devices and applications. Requests for the translation of documentation for equipment and equipment supplied to the territory of the Russian Federation are quite common. To correctly and accurately convey the content of such a text into Russian, in most cases, not only excellent linguistic training is required, but also a certain level of technical knowledge, and even better - technical education.
Interpretation of the term "Technical translation"
If it is necessary to give an interpretation to the term "technical translation", then it can be called a variety that is required to organize a high-quality exchange of scientific and technical data among specialists who do not speak one common language at the proper level.
To perform technical translation at a professional level, you need:
- Excellent knowledge of written and spoken foreign languages;
- Sufficient training in the field of science, the content of texts and scientific works of which must be translated clearly, competently and accurately.
At the same time, in most cases, it is necessary to present the material being translated in a literate and comprehensible (sometimes even non-professionals) language with full observance of all technical features and nuances, therefore a real professional chooses one, maximum, two specializations for his activities.
Specificity of modern technical translation
Translation of technical documentation assumes the use of a formal logical style, which is distinguished by a number of specific features. First of all, it is worth mentioning the absolute accuracy of the content of the translation relative to the original text. The translation should not bear even a shadow of the performer's emotional coloring, as well as the personal attitude of the translator to the content of the material. The final work will contain a large number of special vocabulary and professional terms, most often with Greek and Latin roots. And the last thing that you should definitely pay attention to is the set of language constructions inherent in technical translations. These include a variety of impersonal phrases, passive phrases, impersonal forms of verbs, as well as inverse phrases.
If you need to translate a large volume of documentation of a technical nature, especially in a short time, several linguists are working on this work in ours. But, since the final material needs to be presented in a unified style, then, by dividing the entire volume of work among several translators, an editor is also involved in the formation of the finished text, who works on unifying the presentation style, corrects syntax and stylistic errors.
Difficulties in technical translation
Depending on the complexity of the original text, its subject matter and the timing of the provision of the finished work, you can contact not only high-level professionals, but also novice translators. In this case, you cannot count on a high level, but the translation will be much cheaper, and beginners will have the opportunity to supplement their resume. By now, technical translation is one of the most well-paid types of work for linguists.
By engaging a technical translator in the work, the output is a document, the content of which is stated clearly, informatively, objectively, while preserving the semantic specifics of the original text.
Varieties of technical translation
Translators are faced with a problem when, having accurately conveyed the content of documents, that is, having translated the content of the source material competently and professionally, they receive a text in Russian at the output, which is somewhat illogical or excessively rich in special terminology. In this case, the assistance of a technical editor is required in order to obtain a document that will satisfy the customer and retain the original meaning and specificity of the original document.
If the text to be translated contains illustrations, then the translator must transfer all illustrations, graphs and figures by translating all inscriptions into the required language.
The main form of technical translation is complete. A somewhat less popular option is abstract translation as well. Much less often, in comparison with the previous versions, translation of titles and annotated technical translation is required.
Rules to be followed by technical translators
Getting a quality translation of a technical text requires a number of rules to be followed. First, don't involve any machine translators. Secondly, use specialized dictionaries, which are necessary for the reason that many foreign words have many meanings. Thirdly, it is necessary to carefully study the content of such provisions as:
- Requirements for texts that are translated by freelancers;
- Actual recommendations for translation;
- System of requirements for paperwork. Publishing and library standards. GOST 7.36-2006
In cases where a translation of a legally binding document is required, it is also necessary to study the content of the standards GOST R ISO 15489-1-2007 and GOST 7.36-2006, so that the translation made will allow the document to be valid.
Requirements for a technical translator
An equally important rule is the presentation of the material exclusively in an official business style, therefore, elements of the spoken language and any abbreviations are not acceptable. The figures are translated in full compliance with the State System for Ensuring the Uniformity of Measurements. But references to international national standards should be left in the original language of the materials that need translation.
It is important to remember that all text must be presented in an impersonal form, using chevrons instead of quotation marks.
A technical translator must have such knowledge and skills as:
- fluency in at least one foreign language;
- fluency in the language into which the translation of a foreign technical document is performed;
- the ability to effectively use working and proven free sources of information for translation;
- possession of excellent knowledge of terminology not only in the native language, but also in the foreign language in which the text of the document is presented for translation;
- possession of a sufficient level of theoretical (practical) knowledge about the field for which the translation is carried out;
- possession of various types of translation of technical documentation.
It is desirable that the translator has not only a linguistic, but also a technical education received in the field in which he specializes, as well as good