Ordinary Everyday English Words and Their Technical Meanings

Third, a term may have an ordinary, everyday meaning that is not obviously wrong in the context. This is the most dangerous sort of case, because the translator can easily fail to recognize the term as a technical term, and mistakenly render it in its ordinary sense. Swimming-pool is apparently a perfectly ordinary collocation of everyday words. The non-specialist might well translate this expression simply as "плавальний басейн", without recognizing it as a technical term "гомогенний реактор". Volume control may be rendered by a non-specialist translator as "перевірка об'єму "instead of" регулятор гучності".

As these examples show, access to technical dictionaries and up-to-date databanks is indispensable for translators of technical texts.

General dictionaries for the most part include terminological meanings in the semantic structure of the head-word. The fact that one of the meanings is terminological is signalled by showing In brackets the field where it can be used, e.g. astron. (astronomy), chem. (chemistry), geom. (geometry), maths (mathematics), med. (medicine).

Specialized dictionaries, unlike general dictionaries, make a careful selection of terms.

However, not even these source materials can be guaranteed lo keep the translator out of difficulties. For one thing, technical texts are liable to be innovative — why publish them unless they make some new contribution? This means that dictionaries and databanks must always lag slightly behind the most up-to-date use of technical terms.

Second, even the best source materials do not necessarily (jive a single, unambiguous synonym for a particular technical term, so that the translator may still have to make an informed choice between alternatives, e.g.: gate 1) ворота, затвор, засувка, дверцята люка, шлюзні ворота, шлагбаум; 2) літник; 3) штрек, відкаточний штрек, прохід, фільмовий канал; 4) селектор; 5) ключ; 6) шибер; 7) куліса; 8) вентиль; 9) сторбімпульс; 10) решітка корообдирального барабану; 11) ножівковий верстат.

Finally, even established technical terms are sometimes used loosely or informally in technical texts, in which case it may be misleading to render them by their technical target language synonyms.

All of this suggests that the normal limitations on the use dictionaries apply also to technical translation, but in particularly acute form. That is, translators can only select the appropriate target language terminology from a range alternatives offered by the dictionary if they have a firm grasp both of the textual context and of the wider technical context.