English Russian translation of Technical documentation - Main provisions

Language of technical documents is characterized by large number of terms, by the prevalence of various abridgment, by the prevalence of certain syntactic phrases over others and especially by the transfer of a number of grammatical constructions, etc.

Main stylistic features of technical documents are brevity of statement and clarity of language.

Main difference between the language of technical documents from the language of literature is a great richness of the text by specific technical terms, translation of which is often not given, not only in conventional dictionaries, but in the specialized terminology dictionaries and glossaries.

In connection with the expansion of boundaries of human knowledge the need for new definitions of concepts is increasing both in the master fields of science and in new fields of science and technology and, therefore, expands vocabulary, and vocabulary expansion is mainly connected with the emergence of new terms.

When translating technical documents an absolutely clear knowledge of new terminology and the ability to transmit it to the Russian language is required. Herein lies one of the main difficulties.

Basic requirements, to which good technical translation has to be met, are as follows:


1. Accurate transfer of the original text.
2. Strict clarity of statement of thought in most compressed and laconic manner, characteristic to the style of Russian technical documents. When translating of such documents one should not transfer to the Russian text specific features of English. It is of prime importance because it is necessary to formulate a thought in Russian, in order to correspond with the modern practice.
3. Technical translation must fully meet the universally accepted norms of the Russian literary language.


This must be considered when translating missing in the Russian language and characteristic to the English language syntactic constructions. In addition, you should always remember that the semantic richness of the English language is weakened by the end of the sentence, whereas in Russian, on the contrary, meaning growth comes from the beginning of the sentence to its end.

Thus, to what the attention is focused in the English sentence is at first place, and in Russian it is at last place.

Sergey Molodets
http://translate-ok.at.ua/