Scientific translation encompasses scientific research papers, theses, monographs, and various symposia and conference presentations, anything, in short, that is deemed to contribute to the advancement of science. It is usually commissioned by individual scientists, research laboratories and science publications.

This is generally a neglected segment of the translation markets. With notable exceptions, scientists tend to have little time and money for translation and are often loathe to admitting that they cannot write properly in English (which is what scientific translation is about). So they do it themselves – often having their papers turned down as ‘poor English’ – instead of having a qualified translator do it properly.

It is generally assumed that science translators must be experts in the subject area involved. And it is a well-known fact that science is published in English.

Many scientific journals require translations to be the work of native speakers of the language of publication (a quality often judged on the basis of the translator’s name). The requirement for linguistic acceptability of research papers may even extend to having an author or joint author with an unquestionably English- looking and sounding name. This is why, except where provision is made for translation costs, research laboratories all over the world tend to resort to the services of native English-speaking temporary research assistants or associate team members. It is usually the rule, under such circumstances, that the ‘translator’ is recognised as joint author of the article or paper. In any case, that fellow scientist does the necessary editing and rewriting to provide the degree of fluency and authenticity that the journal editors usually require.

IT translation refers to translations of any document relating to IT hardware or software. This is not quite the same as ‘localisation’, which refers to the translation of linguistic components embedded in various products such as software (see below).

Advertising and marketing translation is concerned with getting across the impact of campaigns. It is highly critical as is illustrated by the advertising agency promoting the ‘weight gain’ afforded by revolutionary light aeroplane tires. Advertising and marketing translation is some kind of a compromise between the subtleties of literature and the rigour of technical translation, with commercial rules and principles in between. It is more and more widely connected with Web site, video games and software localisation.

In fact, only the nine above domains warrant the existence of domain subcategories. All other forms of specialisation would be labelled “translation of X”, where X is the name of the domain accompanied by the term ‘documents’/documentation’ or ‘material’ (e.g. translation of civil engineering documents or translation ofwoodcarving documentation).

Again, where sheer volumes warrant, there emerges a category of translation defined as the translation of a particular type of document. It is thus customary to single out patents, foreign trade instruments, insurance policies, and a few others.

Today, the translation of patents is a good case in point as there is much talk of doing away with the translation of patents by deciding that a patent application filed in one language (guess which?) suffices for the whole of Europe. This would probably mean the death of the high-volume patent translation industry.

Incidentally, another category of translations would be CV translation, whose volumes have rocketed recently and which also provides a good entry point for the provision of further services in translation, language tuition and internationalisation.

Web sites and multimedia material do not fall within this category as they have generated what might be considered entirely autonomous categories and huge markets and will be considered separately.

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Category: Writing
Keywords: translation, jobs