TECHNICAL TRANSLATIONS: MEETING The NEED

‘The telling of this story’ wrote Gottfried Keller at the start of his Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, ‘might seem to be merely pointless repetition.’ The writer of yet another paper on technical translations may feel himself in the same position. What can he say that has not already been said? Faced with this problem, I first thought to solve it by describing my own experiences in this field, since one of my functions as an information officer is to operate a translation service. I am therefore inviting you to follow the progress of a typical translation through our system at BP Research Centre from the initial request to the final evaluation. However, to prevent this talk from being too parochial, I shall try to relate each stage of the process to the wider issues involved.