Translation and Comprehension of Specialized Texts

In laypersons one often finds two rather extreme positions: some believe that translating is simple for the bilingual and that even highly technical or scientific texts can be translated, provided one knows the words. Others believe in “difficulty” of texts in fields they are not familiar with. They say that only by understanding the author’s meaning thoroughly can the translator be sure to choose the best available words and present them in the best possible structure. Or “the basic principle is that an interpreter cannot interpret what he doesn’t understand.”

When we compare the comprehension of the interpreter and the comprehension of the specialist, we can see that the specialist grasp the logic of the sentence quicker and their idea of what each technical term means in the sentence is more accurate and they can relate the terms and the new information to the information they already possess.

For the translator it is essential to understand the functional and logical infrastructure of the sentences so as to be able to repro- duce them in the Target Language. It is not always possible to transcribe a source language structure into a parallel linguistic structure and when it is the result is more often than not clumsy or even linguistically unacceptable, as can be seen in word-for-word translations that are sometimes published in conference proceedings and even in scientific journals.

When the functional and logical infrastructure of a sentence is understood, it may be sufficient for the translator to know the proper terminological equivalents of nouns or noun groups and sometimes verbs, to produce a good translation in a field he doesn’t know very well but this is not always the case, as some stylistic elements may also come in. Terminology is where most practical problems lie in technical and scientific translation. Glossaries and dictionaries are never exhaustive, never totally reliable, and seldom precise enough to provide non-specialized translator with the definite solutions of their terminological problems; the problematic source-language term may be missing in a glossary, or several possible equivalents may be listed without sufficient indications to allow the translator to determine which is the right one in the translation context, or an ”equivalent” is given but is later found to be erroneous or inappropriate. In translation the problem becomes serious as soon as there are a few terms in the Source language text that are not understood by the translator or when a couple of available equivalent terms in the Target language are not quite appropriate. In interpretation this problem may have less serious implications: interpretation is made for real-time oral communication, in which accuracy in terminological usage is less critical than in translation, and participants can react and provide clarification as soon as they detect a terminological problem that hampers communication. Moreover, because of their physical presence on the very spot where communication takes place, interpreters have the opportunity to hear Target language equivalent terms in the relevant languages during the conference (or read them in conference documents) and so ask experts to help them with terminological problems.

Summing up, in order to translate a sentence in a specialized discourse interpreters/translators have to understand its functional and logical infrastructure, and to have available the appropriate equivalents or other terms or paraphrases to express the same message in the target language.

Translators can look for the necessary information in various written sources and interpreters are helped by the conference context, including conference texts and speeches written or made in the relevant source and target languages. Both interpreters and translators use the context provided by the texts and speeches to gain more knowledge about the subject by analyzing available clues and thus improve their comprehension of subsequent speeches or later text segments. While processing the texts or speeches, interpreters and translators familiarize themselves with the subject matter and gain the better understanding of the author’s and speaker’s texts and speeches, to an extent which sometimes approximates that of experts and has surprised more than one translation reader or delegate.