Translating Nature Terminology

Book excerpt: Translating Nature Terminology hopes to fill a vacuum in the market, combining practical advice for translators with aspects of linguistics and natural sciences. It is a response to the growing popularity of bilingual (Polish-English) publications on nature in Poland, which, however, abound in mistranslated nature terminology. Using cognitivism-based analysis, it traces the vagaries of categorisation of the natural world within one language as well as interlingually, with a view to helping translators find suitable equivalents of concepts and terms representing them. Translators can learn, for instance, when overspecification, underspecification or domestication are justified and when they become a translation error, what to do with the names of cultivars, or in what context one should render turzycowisko as “tall sedge swamp” and where as “sedge fen.” The book also demonstrates that terminological correctness is not only a must for informative texts but it is often indispensable to ensure the coherence of literary works. It pays particular attention to the penetration of folk terms into specialist texts and vice versa. The reliability of dictionaries, both general and specialist, is called into question and keeping in touch with up-to-date professional sources is recommended instead. All the above claims are thoroughly researched and amply exemplified.