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Features of the translation of technical documents

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John Alex
Features of the translation of technical documents

The main requirement for any translation of technical documents is based on the principle of maximum mutual understanding between the author and the reader. It does not matter between the languages ​​in which the translation is performed. The absolute transfer of the author's idea dominates the work of a specialist in the translation of technical texts.

Difficulty understanding

The complexity of the work of employees of the technical texts professional passport translation agency lies in the mismatch of the meanings of some terms in different languages. However, if in fiction the meaning of words can be guessed from the context of the story, and this concept can be interpreted in a way that suits the reader, then such manipulations in professional literature are fundamentally unacceptable.

This category should exclude inconsistencies in the meaning of various systems of measurement of physical quantities adopted in the USA and Great Britain. In these countries, from infancy, people form a stable perception of the world through the prism of their national units of measurement. And the difficulty lies in the fact that these are not just different names for the same parameter, but mathematically different patterns.

For example, when translating technical documents from English, a professional translator skips the following units:

  • Pounds per square inch (pressure);
  • Square feet (area);
  • Fahrenheit (temperature);
  • Gallons (volume).


These units of measurement mean nothing for our documentation. And what is especially bad: they cannot be translated linearly. The Fahrenheit (F) temperature unit used in American scientific literature is not associated with anything by Russian-speaking readers, and it is even impossible to interpret it in the mind.

This is best understood by looking at a single example. The melting point of water is 32˚F (0˚C). It would be logical to assume that the temperature of the human body is 32 + 36.6 = 68.6°F and the boiling point of water is 32 + 100 = 132°F. But in fact, a normal human temperature is 98°F on the Fahrenheit scale. and water boils at 212°F.

And this absurdity in measuring the size of the house can only be preserved if the technical translation of texts from American scientific literature is carried out into Russian. In all other cases, the translator must convert the values ​​to the SI system. This work increases costs, but also gives the reader a deeper understanding of the material.

Mistakes leading to tragedy

An illiterate and purely technical translation of English texts can lead to tragedies with human casualties. To illustrate this, it suffices to consider a plane crash in the late 1980s, when a plane en route from the UK to the US crashed.

This aircraft suddenly ran out of fuel over the Atlantic. The pilot arrived in Iceland using emergency fuel and made an emergency landing. The created commission has found a mistake. According to the documents, 5,000 liters of fuel were refueled at the UK airport, and this should be enough. After a lengthy investigation, it was determined that the plane had been filled with 5,000 imperial gallons, and that it needed 5,000 US gallons. Nobody knew that 1 gallon equals 3.78 liters in the US and 4.5 liters in the UK. The price of such a mistake is a tragedy.

At the same time, it is noted that translation from German does not require such transformations, since the international standard of the SI system is used in scientific texts and in everyday life in Germany.


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