The Interpreter and Translator Trainer

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Scientific and technical translation, by Maeve

Olohan, New York, Routledge, 2015, viii + 253 pp.,
US$39.95, ISBN 978-0-415-83786-6 (pbk)

Hua Song

To cite this article: Hua Song (2016): Scientific and technical translation, by Maeve Olohan,
New York, Routledge, 2015, viii + 253 pp., US$39.95, ISBN 978-0-415-83786-6 (pbk), The
Interpreter and Translator Trainer, DOI: 10.1080/1750399X.2016.1204881

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THE INTERPRETER AND TRANSLATOR TRAINER, 2016

BOOK REVIEW

Scientific and technical translation, by Maeve Olohan, New York, Routledge, 2015,
viii + 253 pp., US$39.95, ISBN 978-0-415-83786-6 (pbk)

Scientific and technical translation is part of the process of disseminating information on an

international scale, which is indispensable for the functioning of our modern society
(Pinchuck 1977, 13). Even though many of the world’s translators earn a sizeable amount
of their incomes from scientific or technical translation, many translator training programmes
spend only a few hours on these texts. Moreover, until recently, there were relatively few
pedagogical resources in English for students and teachers of scientific and technical transla-
tion. Scientific and Technical Translation, by Maeve Olohan, helps respond to this need. It
focuses on texts that are typically translated in scientific and technical domains and includes a
wide range of relevant tasks and activities, examples from several commonly taught language
pairs and a glossary of key terms. This book is an essential component for a postgraduate
(master’s level) course or module on scientific and technical translation. Consisting of 261
pages, the volume is divided into seven parts and also includes a list of tables, a list of
abbreviations, an introduction, five appendices, a glossary and an index.
There are several similar works dealing with scientific and technical translation, the most
systematic and comprehensive of which is undoubtedly Scientific and Technical Translation
Explained by Jody Byrne (2014). However, Olohan’s book differs from Byrne’s in three
major ways.
First, Olohan’s book is designed for a postgraduate course or for professional translators
who want to obtain further training or experience in scientific or technical translation, while
Byrne’s work is aimed at students who are interested in scientific and technical translation,
both as a career choice and as a research area, but who have found it difficult to find
sufficient information to help them get started.
Second, authentic texts are often used as a basis for discussion in these two books, but
Olohan, who is the author of Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies (2004), places a
particular focus on corpora (Chapter 2) to provide the readers with insights into
terminological and phraseological research and to help prepare them for aspects of
professional life.
Last but not least, both books discuss scientific and technical translation from the
perspective of communication. However, Byrne (2014, 25–36) mainly reviews the definition,
generic features and target audience of scientific and technical translation, while Olohan
(Chapter 6) focuses on communication between professional scientists by studying a
number of specific features of research articles and abstracts.
After the introduction, which presents the intellectual challenge, purpose, rationale,
approach, material, languages and structure of the book, Chapter 1 introduces scientific
and technical translation as a profession and reviews the translation landscape by outlining
some of the typical workplace configurations for translators and other roles for trained
translators. Olohan discusses the competences required of qualified translators, explains the
notion of genre as a way of understanding scientific and technical translation from the
perspective of communication, and introduces the translation brief and the translation
project specification as tools to help prepare and produce translations.
Resources for scientific and technical translation are examined in Chapter 2, with a
special focus on corpus-based terminology research. Olohan introduces terms, concepts and
2 BOOK REVIEW

procedures for using corpus resources to research terminology and other aspects of specia-
lised language use. She also discusses how to manage and store terminological data for
future reference and how to use other computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools such as
translation memories and machine translation.
Chapter 3 focuses on the genre of instructional texts aimed at helping users to install or
operate technical products. Olohan starts to examine the genre of technical instructions by
pointing out the criteria that designers of technical documentation must adhere to for
usability, readability, words and images. Then she describes the genre in more detail by
considering the different types of information contained in instruction manuals and exam-
ining how these manuals fulfil various communicative purposes. She concludes by addres-
sing some common difficulties confronting translators of technical instructions, assuming
that ‘instructions may require cultural adaptation, not only in relation to cultural references,
but also with regard to degree of explicitness and level of detail of stepwise instruc-
tions’ (77).
In Chapter 4, Olohan discusses the genres of technical datasheets and brochures, which
‘play an important role in the marketing and supply of technical products, and are
frequently translated in the context of international trade and distribution of goods’ (80).
The author assesses their communicative purposes, highlights their typical features, provides
some ways for the audience to prepare to translate them, and offers examples of translated
texts for reference to help address translation challenges.
Chapter 5 covers the genre of patent applications, helping the audience to understand the
purpose, application and granting of patents. The author analyses a patent application to
help readers understand how language is used to fulfil the specific purposes of the applica-
tion. This chapter also considers the international dimension of patenting by focusing on
the work of the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization
and the role of translation and machine translation in those settings. The author concludes
by suggesting some general principles for translating patents, based on the function of
patents, the way in which patent applications are prepared and processed, and the typical
features of the genre.
Chapter 6 explores communication between professional scientists through abstracts and
research articles. The author situates the translation of research articles against the back-
ground of English as a scientific lingua franca and outlines some specific features of research
articles and research article abstracts. The author assumes that translators wishing to
specialise in the translation of scientific research should acquire in-depth insight into the
conventions of these genres and be able to compare and contrast the conventions of English
and other languages (161–165).
The translation of popular science news articles is the focus of Chapter 7. The author
starts by introducing popular science discourse and explaining how public and scientific
discourses interact. She traces a popular science story from professional journal article to
press release to news item, and identifies some typical features of popular science news
reporting as well as various cross-cultural differences. Finally, she concludes by highlighting
the cultural specificity of popular science reporting, based on examples of translated news
stories from National Geographic magazine.
The combination of interdisciplinary research, real-world examples drawn from profes-
sional practice and large-scale corpora, and the numerous learning activities found in this
book equips students and translators with the knowledge and skills needed to get started in
this challenging field. In this sense, Scientific and Technical Translation can be regarded as
another key resource for scientific and technical translation, which has been estimated to
account for some 90% of global translation output (Kingscott 2002, 247).
What strikes me most about this book is the coherent organisation and structure of every
chapter. Each one starts with the introduction to concepts, moves to key studies, then
 THE INTERPRETER AND TRANSLATOR TRAINER 3

progresses to exercises and further readings before concluding with key points. Another
strength is the wide range of authentic materials and topics that are covered, including
technical instructions, data sheets and brochures, patents, scientific research articles and
abstracts, popular science press releases and news reports. It also judiciously uses corpora as
research tools for scientific and technical translation. This is because the author is a leading
expert in corpus-based translation and has taken the latest corpus-based studies into
consideration when preparing this book.
That being said, I wish to make two minor points of critique. First of all, little attention is
given to localisation, which is an important topic in scientific and technical translation. The
localisation industry, which traditionally makes extensive use of scientific and technical
translators, is estimated to be worth around US$12 billion (Depalma and Beninatto 2006, 4).
In addition, in the excerpts, English is always the source text, while German is usually the
target, although a few other Western languages, such as Italian, Spanish and French, are
included as well. Some coverage of Eastern languages would have been appreciated.
To conclude, Scientific and Technical Translation is indeed an impressive ‘source book’
for any higher education programme in which technical or scientific translation is taught as
a core or elective course between English and any other language, but it can also serve well
as a self-study resource for translators who have little training or experience in scientific or
technical translation.

Funding
This research is funded by the China Scholarship Council and supported by the Middlebury Institute
of International Studies at Monterey.

References
Byrne, J. 2014. Scientific and Technical Translation Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
DePalma, D., and B. Renato 2006. “Ranking of Top 20 Translation Companies for 2005.” Common Sense
Advisory, Inc. http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Research/All_Users/060301_QT_top_20/tabid/
1429/Default.aspx.
Kingscott, G. 2002. “Technical Translation and Related Disciplines.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 10
(4): 247–255. doi:10.1080/0907676X.2002.9961449.
Olohan, M. 2004. Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies. New York, NY: Routledge.
Pinchuck, I. 1977. Scientific and Technical Translation. London: André Deutsch Ltd.

Hua Song
College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
52859906@qq.com http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9084-8990
© 2016, Hua Song
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2016.1204881