What is a scientific translation?
Scientific translation services are one of the most demanding translation services, as they require a great deal of attention to detail. For this reason, they require professional work. It is a specialised branch within technical translation and may be related to any discipline of science. In these cases, translators must be specialised and well qualified in that field, as the translation must be accurate.
Terminology plays a very important role in scientific translation. Therefore, translators must have extensive knowledge of the specific branch of science to be translated. The translator should not only have a broad linguistic knowledge of the language, but also of the terminology of that branch. In this way, the translation will be detailed and complete.
Scientific translation services offered
The type of content that is usually translated are: conferences, presentations, theses, protocols, books, scientific manuals, research articles, etc. It should be noted that scientific translation services do not only have science as their field of expertise. They also take into account the areas of technology and humanities since these are also sciences.
In science, we find the fields of biology, geology, chemistry, physics, medicine, mathematics, genetics, among others. In technology, we find the fields of robotics, nanotechnology, computer science, biotechnology, etc. In humanities, we find the fields of psychology, sociology, education, anthropology, art history, etc.
It is true that the predominant language of science is English. However, many nations are interested in studies conducted in non-English-speaking countries. Both research institutions and scientific companies want to internationalise their business. For this reason, they request scientific translation services from companies such as Translinguo Global®.
Complexity of scientific translation
A good understanding of the language and the field into which you translate makes all the difference. In order to achieve this, certain errors that arise when translating must be solved. For example, the most obvious is to check the translation if a machine translator has been used (this is known as postediting). The majority of machine translators do not usually have extensive knowledge of terminology, so they will make mistakes.
Another mistake is literal translations. This occurs because the translator does not understand the content of the text correctly, which leads to an erroneous translation. False friends are another common error. This error can arise if the translator is not specialised in that field and does not know its terminology.
A curious fact is that scientific translations are more expensive than general translations. This is due to the fact that more training is required from the translator and much more precision is needed to translate. As a result, the time spent on translation increases.
