Technical_translation_is_it_really_about_terminology_en

Technical translation: is it really about terminology?
Vyacheslav Guzovsky
September 2014

About the presentation
• The presentation will last 50 minutes and will be followed by
a Q&A session. You will also be invited to take part in
a quick poll by using the link on the session page
• All the participants on the call are being placed on mute
• If you have any questions then please submit them
via the Q&A function in the chat-box
• The presentation will be recorded and made
available to the attendees

Agenda
• Translation quality: getting it right
• Terminology management cues
• Context as the focus point
• Translating tech: tools of the trade
• Selling the freelance advantage

Can you nail the challenge?
Q: When is a Christmas tree not a Christmas
tree?
A: ?

Why is it important to learn?
You can not speed up the number of years
of experience you have, but you can
perform at a higher level than everybody
else with the same level of experience

Who is concerned?
• Translators
• Proofreaders
• Content creators
• Project Managers

Translation process explained
The translation process is divided into 5 phases

Phase 1: Client Inputs
• Receive files from the client
• Analyze the files
• Extract text from source files
• Apply Translation Memory

Phase 2: Translation
• Translation by native professionals
• Editing and proofreading process
• Samples sent to client for review
• On approval, translation of the whole content is concluded

Phase 3: Integration
• Integrate translated content with source files
• Locale specific adaptation
• Final text file development

Phase 4: Quality Check
• Linguistic & Tech QA
• Final inspection of the text file

Phase 5: Final Submission
• Delivery of the translation to client
• Client's Approval Feedback
• Incorporating any changes after the feedback

Quality translation begins with content creation and the
processes that support it. Technical content creation is
a translation process as many users do not speak geek and
many techies have difficulty communicating at a level that is
comfortable for nontechies.

Documentation process
• researching
• developing templates
• style guides
• glossaries
• content creation and management
• publishing

Good translators must not
only speak both the source
language and target language
fluently, they must also
understand the industry and
products that they are
translating the content for

Translation quality: getting it right
Like any supplier of goods or
services,
a translator potentially bears certain
obligations towards his client concerning
the quality of his work

Client’s quality requirements focus on:
• Deadlines
• Consistency
• Numbers
• Names
• Terminology

Translator’s quality requirements focus on:
• Accuracy
• Layout
• Fonts
• Headers and footers
• Proper names spelling
• Pagination
• Margins, graphics and positioning

What kind of translation do we need?
• For publication
• For information
• Raw computer output
• Gisting

What output can we have?
• Raw translation
• Normal quality translation
• Extra-quality translation
• Adaptation of original text

How do we measure quality? Is it scalable?
ISO 9001:
• Say whay you do
• Do what you say
• Prove it
• Document it
ISO 9001 tells you that you should do it.
EN 15038 tells you what you should do.

There are three key points common to all standards:
• Select your human resources with care
• Come to an agreement on your project specifications
before translation begins
• Follow the specifications at every step of the project

• Quality Control refers to quality related activities associated
with translation projects. It is used to make sure that the output
will be of good quality and that it will be complete and correct
• Quality Assurance refers to the process of granting
approval
to a project

• Experience serves as a guarantee for quality.
In the course of the project, the translators must
focus on controlling the progress of quality.
• The technology allows the process to be scalable.
It also helps to ensure quality and
consistency, not to mention the translation project
management workflow which becomes way
more efficient.

There is a view within the translation industry that, while
not doing any actual harm, an over-reliance on quality
standards can give a false sense of security. Blindly following
translation standards does not on its own provide real
assurance regarding translation quality. Quality in translation
can be achieved by focusing more on providing on-going
training and feedback
to translators.

Terminology management cues
• Technical terminology is the specialized
vocabulary of a field. These terms have specific
definitions within the field, which is not necessarily
the same as their meaning in common use.
• If you supply basic information to five
native speakers of almost any language and
ask them each to write a 100-word product
description, you will get five texts, some clearer
and more readable than others. People familiar
with the subject are likely to produce a better
text. The same applies to translators.

Diagram of arc and weld area, in shielded metal arc
welding (SMAW):
1. Coating Flow
2. Rod
3. Shield Gas
4. Fusion
5. Base metal
6. Weld metal
7. Solidified Slag

Weld - connection made by welding pieces of metal.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weld
Welding - a fabrication or sculptural process
that joins materials, usually metals or
thermoplastics, by causing coalescence. This is often
done by melting the workpieces and adding a filler
material to form a pool of molten material (the weld
pool) that cools to become a strong joint, with
pressure sometimes used in conjunction with
heat, or by itself, to produce the weld.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welding

Welding is NOT:
Soldering - a process in which two or more metal items are joined
together by melting and flowing a filler metal (solder) into the joint,
the filler metal having a lower melting point than the adjoining
metal.

Welding is NOT:
Brazing – a metal-joining process whereby a filler metal is heated
above melting point and distributed between two or more close-
fitting parts by capillary action.

Terminology
• Butt joint
• Lap joint
• Tee joint
• Corner joint
• Edge joint
• Groove weld
• Fillet weld
• Slot & plug weld
• Complete joint penetration (CJP)
• Partial joint penetration (PJP)
• Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW)
• Submerged Arc Welding (SAW)
• Procedure Qualification Record (PQR)
• Welding Procedure Specification (WPS)

A Beginner's Guide to the Steel Construction Manual, Chapter 5 Welded Connections:
bgstructuralengineering.com/BGSCM13/BGSCM005/index.htm
This source is informative and well illustrated. The downside is that it looks like text spread
all over the page. It is quite good for scientific and education purposes, but not structured
well enough for a linguist.
Here is an example of a Wiki with well structured terminology database:
intent.gigatran.com
The database contains more than 250 000 entries (flash cards) and is free for all
users. Can be a helpful tool for tech translators. Here you can also download a
software called IntentRunner. It is a proprietary search engine that also can retrieve
terms from Multitran.

Multitran
multitran.ru
Online dictionary maintained and updated by the translation community.
Can
be a helpful tool for tech translators working in English to Russian and
Russian
to English language pairs. Contains terminology from different domains.
The Schlumberger Oilfield Glossary
glossary.oilfield.slb.com
The more technical the subject, the more important it is that translators know it
inside out. Good translators strip down the sentences entirely before creating new
ones in the target language. And they ask questions along the way.

• EN 15038 defines terminology and terminology
management as core components of the
entire process of quality services in the
translation process. It is totally true since up to
40% of the time invested in the translation
is used for terminology research.
• Terminology in the development of deep water
drilling technology:
translationdirectory.com/article1044.htm

Can you nail the challenge?
Q: When is a Christmas tree not a Christmas
tree?
A: When it is wet and attached to an oil well

Context as the focus point
The general tendency is to consider translation
as something that anybody can do with the help of
an adequate dictionary. It is tempting to think
that a successful technical translation is all
about good terminology management.
Is it true? What if we challenge this concept?

Here is a case study I found when surfing Art in Translation Events on Facebook.
The part in question is the fire damper consisting of a short tube and a rotating valve
with electric drive:
(1) Indicator lights or relays can be connected as long as the
performance specifications are taken into consideration.
(2) Индикаторные лампы или реле могут быть подсоединены
до тех пор, пока учитываются характеристики работы.
(3) Потребляемый ток сигнальной лампы или реле не должен
превышать коммутационной способности контактов концевого
выключателя.
Sometimes it turns out almost impossible to translate a sentence or even
the whole text based on the terminology and glossaries available. In this
particular case strict adherence to context and using common sense can
create a satisfactory translation.

Another example taken from a Discovery Channel
transmission script. As you can see here,
a translation mistake has been tracked based on
strict adherence to context.

Translating tech: tools of the trade
Oil & gas translation can be a challenging experience as
it involves not only professional translators, but
also a thorough linguistic review by translators who are
experts in the oil & gas industry. Oil and gas
translations typically involve highly complex terms and
concepts that are quite specific to the industry.
These words and phrases may not even exist in the
target language.

Just a hundred years ago, the best equipped translators could only
rely on their QWERTY typewriter, their own pool of reference
books, manuals and dictionaries carefully maintained and updated
at home. Not anymore. In less than a decade we have gone
from simultaneous or consecutive interpreting, to over-the-
phone and video interpreting, to web-based instant message
delivery. Technology is transforming the profession at light
speed. But there are still a few things that remained
unchanged.

Common sense
Common sense is the translator's first tool.
• Does the translated sentence make sense?
• Is it consistent with the context?
If the message seems too surprising, there is probably
a snag.

Visuals
An illustrated parts list
in a tank maintenance
calculation will normally
be fairly straightforward to
translate. It also can spare
creating three to four pages
of plain text.

Internet
Do not try to translate things that already exist in the target language – find them and
copy.
The Internet is a powerful tool, and many texts submitted for translation are far from
original, you can find very similar ones in your target language; in particular, if and
when the target is not your mother tongue, what you find will very likely be better than
what you could do.

Project Naming Convention
Create a dedicated hard drive and file directory on
your desktop for your translation projects. This will
allow quick identification across different projects
and for tracking progress within a project.

Dictionaries
• Oxford Dictionary of English (is not based on Oxford English Dictionary!)
<oxforddictionaries.com>
• Collins English Dictionary <collinsdictionary.com>
• Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary <merriam-webster.com>
• ABBYY Lingvo <lingvo.ru>
• Grand Dictionnaire Larousse <editions-larousse.fr>
• Goursau Dictionnaire des Termes Techniques
• The Schlumberger Oilfield Glossary <glossary.oilfield.slb.com>

CAT technology
• SDL Trados
• Déjà Vu
• MemoQ
• Wordfast
• XTM (cloud-based solution)
• TextIn (cloud-based solution)

File format converters
• Abacus Wordcount <globalrendering.com>
• Nuance PDF Converter <nuance.com>
• PDF2Word <verypdf.com>
• Compare Suite <comparesuite.com>
• Infix PDF editor <iceni.com>

Web 2.0
• Social networks <ProZ.com> <LinkedIn.com>
<Xing.com>
• Social bookmarks <del.icio.us>
• Blogging <bloglines.com>
• Wikis <en.wikipedia.org> <termwiki.com>

Areas of concern:
• Context
• Acronims
• Foreign authors
• Client failed to provide a glossary and/or a style guide
• Emergency assignments

How can a translation project go off track:
• Ridiculous deadlines
• Ambiguities in source text amplified by the translator
not asking questions
• misapplied machine translation
• no proofreading by a native speaker
• over-confident translator operating in a vacuum
• no client input
• poor coordination of large projects

Selling the freelance advantage
• Assure your direct clients that you know your limits
• Be an "I", not a "we"
• You maintain complete confidentiality
• You get to know your clients' projects inside out
• You bring up questions as soon as they arise

A word to student translators
• Never accept a translation job you do not have the time or
skills for
• Work into your mother tongue
• Meet the agreed deadlines
• Serve more than you sell
• Remember your customers, not just your transactions
• You are only as good as your last job
You have to have a lot of passion for what you are doing!!!

A word to student translators
Most of oil & gas translation projects are a teamwork!

References
• Baker, Mona. Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and
Applications. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1996.
• Guide to Editing and Proofreading. Oxford Learning Institute, The University of Oxford.
• Kenny, M. Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies. London/New York: Routledge,
1991.
• Lapidus, Dorothy Farris. Collins dictionary geology. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
• Nida, Eugene A. Contexts in Translating. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001.
• Oilfield Glossary. <http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/>
• Rothery, David A. Teach Yourself Geology. London: Teach Yourself Books, 2003.
• Technical Terminology Database. <http://intent.gigatran.com/>
• Technical Terminology Glossaries. <http://brauertraining-terminology.wikispaces.com/home/>
• TermWiki. <http://www.termwiki.com/>

Technical_translation_is_it_really_about_terminology_en

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Mais procurados

Mais procurados (20)

Semelhante a Technical_translation_is_it_really_about_terminology_en

Semelhante a Technical_translation_is_it_really_about_terminology_en (20)

Último

Último (20)

Technical_translation_is_it_really_about_terminology_en