Problems of Technical Translation
March 14th, 2008Technical Translation is a lot tougher than simple literal language translation. This is mainly because, sometimes, there won’t be an exact translation for technical words available from the source language to destination language and vice versa. Also, there is a possibility that some of the technical terms we see in Engineering and Software have their origins in some third languages such as Latin or Hebrew, which renders them virtually non translatable in many other third languages we use today.
Another aspect that renders technical translation a difficult proportion is the lack of proficiency of technical people – such as Engineers – in English. Even though, when they document something, their writing makes sense to a person who is an expert in the technical domain, for a layman translator, he’ll find it tough to follow it word by word in the first place itself, leave alone translating it to another language by sticking to the translation rules. Naturally, in such circumstances, incongruence creeps in inadvertently.
Hence, it is always better to get technical translation done from somebody who has sufficient base in technical lingo, and one who is prepared to research if he/she can’t find the exact translation for a word in the destination language. In other words, hire only those technical translation services that could guarantee the above mentioned condition.
Also, there should be some clause in the contract with the technical translation services agency to ensure grammatical compatibility when the whole document is finished.
If not properly translated, the document will be of no use to the end user.
