BEGINNING TECHNICAL TRANSLATION

I think that the basic technology is engineering and the basic branch of engineering is mechanical; if you want to become a technical translator, that is where you start. However, you should not specialise at the start, but, as in any post-graduate translation course, get as much practice as possible in a range of technologies, in particular the ones that are thriving (de pointe), which, at present, means computer applications in the spectrum of commerce (particularly the tertiary sector) and industry. Again, bear in mind that you are more interested in understanding the description, the function and the effect of a concept such as entropy rather than in learning laws, particularly axioms, theorems, theories, systems in some of which entropy is involved. In a sense, you are learning the language rather than the content of the subject, but, when I say of the terms that the function is as important as the description, and always easier to grasp, I am in fact bringing you back to the application of the laws and principles. When you translate a text, you have to be able to stand back and understand roughly what is happening in real life, not just, or as well as, convincing yourself that the sentence you have just translated makes sense linguistically. You mustn't write the technical equivalent of: 'The King of France is dead'; there must be a thread of action running through the passage which you can grasp at any time. Even though much scientific and technological language and terminology can be translated 'literally' and in newer subjects contains an increasing number of internationalisms and fewer false friends, you have to check the present validity in the register and dialect (viz. usually British or American English) of the terms you use. But here again, there are priorities. Technical terms that appear on the periphery of a text, say relatively context-free in a list or a foot note, are not as important as those that are central; their nomen- clature can be checked without detailed reference to their function or the descrip- tion. In a word, to translate a text you do not have to be an expert in its technology or its topic; but you have to understand that text and temporarily know the vocabulary it uses.

In science, the language is concept-centred; in technology it is object- centred: in, say, production engineering, you have to learn the basic vocabulary with the translations - e.g. 'lathe', 'clutch', 'clamp', 'bolt', 'mill', 'shaft', 'crank', etc. - in diagrams as in the Wiister and Oxford Illustrated dictionaries and obtain a clear idea of outline, composition, function and result, as well as learn the action verbs with which they normally collocate: une came tourne - 'a cam rotates'.