A Textbook Of Translation

Newmark,Peter

Prentice Hall Press

1998

Abstract

Technical translation is one part of specialised translation; institutional translation, the area of politics, commerce, finance, government etc, is the other. I take technical translation as potentially (but far from actually) non-cultural, therefore 'universal'; the benefits of technology are not confined to one speech community. In principle, the terms should be translated; institutional translation is cultural (so in principle, the terms are transferred, plus or minus) unless concerned with international organisations. For this reason, in general, you translate ILO as BIT (F), IAA (G), but you transfer 'RSPCA1 in official and formal contexts, but not in informal ones, where 'RSPCA' would become something like briiischer Tierschuiz-bund, society britannique pour la protection des animaux. The profession of translator is co-extensive with the rise of technology, and staff translators in industry (not in international organisations) are usually called lechnical translators, although institutional and commercial terms are 'umbrella' (Dach) components in all technical translation. Technical translation is primarily distinguished from other forms of translation by terminology, although terminology usually only makes up about 5-10% of a text. Its characteristics, its grammatical features (for English, passives, normalisation, third persons, empty verbs, present tenses) merge with other varieties of language. Its characteristic format (see Sager, Dung worth and McDonald, 1980 for an excellent review of technical writing) is the technical report, but it also includes instructions, manuals, notices, publicity, which put more emphasis on forms of address and use of the second person.