A Basis for Scientific and Engineering Translation

Book excerpt: This e-book and the accompanying handbook attack many of the most crucial difficulties encountered by both native and non-native English speakers when translating scientific and engineering material from German. The e-book is like a miniature encyclopaedia dealing with the fundamental conceptual basis of science, engineering and mathematics, with particular regard to terminology. It provides didactically organised dictionaries, thesauri and a wide range of microglossaries highlighting polysemy, homonymy, hyponymy, context, collocation, usage as well as grammatical, lexical and semantic considerations essential to accurate translation. It also supplies a wide variety of reference material and illustrations useful to self-taught professional technical translators, translator trainers at universities, and especially to student translators. All the main branches of industrial technology are examined, such as mechanical, electrical, electronic, chemical, nuclear engineering, and fundamental terminologies are provided for a broad range of important subfields: automotive engineering, plastics, computer systems, construction technology, aircraft, machine tools. The handbook provides a useful introduction to the e-book, enabling readers proficient in two languages to acquire the basic skills necessary for technical translation by familiarity with fundamental engineering conceptions themselves. An additional source for sample texts can be found on the author's website http://people.freenet.de/Michael_Hann/index.html