ATA Conference Boston - Review of Sessions I

German-English translator Annette Cyrkel took this photo at one of the networking breakfasts at the recent ATA conference in Boston and graciously let me use it. Here are my summaries of three sessions on technical translations/terminology. I'll review two more sessions on the business/marketing end of our profession next week.

• "A Dilemma for Language Service Providers and Translators: Subject Matter Expertise and Internet Style"
• "Technical Writing for Into-English Translators"
• "Search-fu! Finding Terminology on the Internet"

"A Dilemma for Language Service Providers and Translators: Subject Matter Expertise and Internet Style" by Manisha Mittal

Ms. Mittal works for Language Scientific, a translation agency specializing in technical and scientific documents. She explained how her agency analyzes incoming projects and matches translators, subject matter experts and editors with a specific project. Unlike more generalized language services providers, Language Scientific requests fairly detailed information from its end clients. This includes target audience, specific speciality within a subject, type of text, in-house style guides and glossaries. It then assembles a team of translators, editors and proofreaders, at least some of whom are also subject-matter experts in the given sub-speciality. The agency is looking for additional freelancers.

"Technical Writing for Into-English Translators" by Karen M. Tkaczyk

Ms. Tkaczyk defined technical writing as text that conveys informaton accurately, explains technical ideas and is focused on the user. For a technical writer a romantic poem simply becomes "John loves Jane." She then provided a number of specific tips for editing your translation into better technical writing, such as:

• write concisely; if necessary, divide long sentences into multiple shorter ones
• reorder thoughts to make them logically coherent or to present events in the correct order
• turn nouns into strong, active verbs

Translators should pick a specific style guide to follow whenever a client doesn't specify a particular style guide, Ms. Tkaczyk suggested. The presentation concluded with a list of common stylistic errors, such as spacing between units of measure. An extensive list of resources was provided in a handout.

"Search-fu! Finding Terminology on the Internet" by Alex Lane

Mr. Lane focused on the ways in which Google searches can be customized to return the specific results a translator might need. One of the most useful, I think, is the fact that a search query can contain words in more than one language. Google will interpret the languages concerned and return bilingual texts that fit the query. Other ways to find terms include exploiting a site's URL structure to find the same document in a different language (e.g., if a search returns www.example.com/English/document1.html, replace "English" with "German" to see document1 in German) and restricting searches to specific sites or sites with a specific country code. Mr. Lane recommended keeping track of the searches performed, in case terminology choices are questioned later.

ATA Conference - German-English Translation in the Renewables Sector

I arrived in Boston yesterday for a pre-conference seminar about German-English translation in the renewables sector. The conference in question is the 52nd annual conference of the American Translators Association. The seminar was a workshop led by Craig Morris, who, in addition to translating materials about this subject also gives presentations to energy industry executives and others. Before the seminar, he had e-mailed attendees a homework of sorts: a few texts to be translated in advance of the session.

We started by trying to translate a fourth text, a short interview about some of the policies in Germany that are designed to encourage development in the renewable energy industry. As a matter of fact, the texts we had been given in advance were also geared more toward the policy side, rather than the technical end of "alternative energy". In the course of discussing these translations, Mr. Morris provided some technical background, visualized in helpful diagrams.

Next was a short presentation on where and how to research terminology related to renewable energy. Mr. Morris particularly emphasized Wikipedia as a helpful tool. I also use parallel Wikipedia entries in German and English to research other technical terms. While Wikipedia can be unreliable on some topics, most of the basic technology and science articles seem to be quite well written by people who have a thorough understanding of the topic at hand.

After a brief break, the seminar concluded by going over the translations we had been asked to prepare in advance. All in all, I learned a number of useful facts about the technology involved, as well as German and U.S. policy regarding renewable energy. This being a translation conference, the focus on policy documents was probably warranted, but being the geek I am now I want to attend a session on renewable energy technology. Maybe I can find something back in New York...

Keeping Up With Your Field

I specialize in technical translations, particularly IT, but I haven't actually been an IT manager or technical writer for more than a decade. (I was both of these things -- consecutively, not simultaneously -- before embarking on a translation career in 2000.) So while I still deal with any electronics- or wiring-related problems at home and for friends and family, I no longer spend my days immersed in computers. Since technology changes fairly rapidly in this field, I need to make a conscious effort to keep up with the latest terminology.

To do so, I subscribe to a couple of technology magazines, such as Wired, and regularly read online computer articles at sites such as CNet. I do own some specialized computer dictionaries, but by the time such a dictionary is printed, it is already outdated. On my trips to Europe, I pick up the latest issue of various computer magazines so I can keep up with the German terminology in the field -- although much of that is English anyway.

IT is probably extreme in terms of terminological change, but even in less rapidly-changing fields, such as finance, new terms develop, or at least enter the mainstream vocabulary. Before the recent economic crisis, for example, few people knew that a number of risky financial instruments even existed, let alone knew what they were called. Now everyone is familiar with subprime mortgages and various types of swaps, among other terms.

Specialized printed dictionaries rarely can keep up with these changes in a timely manner. That is why most of us rely on online resources in our terminology research. I use LEO, the online German-English dictionary originally developed by the computer science department at the Technical University of Munich, extensively, in addition to various other sites.

What are some of your favorite online resources?