Technical translation is an integral part of the modern business process. Clients and customers need understand bulk information quickly. For this reason, technical translation services should be provided effectively according to a deadline.
What is a technical translation?
Technical translation is a department of specialized translation of texts, which related to technological areas and contain specific scientific and technological information. It is used for the exchange of special scientific information by people who speak different languages.
Technical document translation includes translation of different documentation:
- responses to RFPs
- technical patents
- technical drawings
- technical reports
- safety manuals
- operating manuals
- engineering specifications
As a branch, technical translation has been developed since the 1960s. The source of the text lies at the heart of the process of this type of translation. Nowadays, 90% of technical texts are translated by professional technical translators.
The technical translator has to not only feed with information but also transmit the meaning the meaning and knowledge. That is why, a technical translator could perform the duty of the technical writer. They create meaning. These specialists should have multicultural and inter disciplinary background. In addition to strong linguistic skills, they should understand specialized field such as telecommunication, psychology, engineering or industrial construction, etc. The majority of translators specialized only in one field. Furthermore, they have to improve the level of their knowledge attending training of translation.
If specialist uses machine translation or computer-assisted translation, he must have solid technique knowledge. However, it is necessary to be creative if a translator does not work with the aid of machine translation or computer-assisted translation.
What is machine translation?
Machine translation is a method of translation whereby specialist uses different computer software, which create translation from a source language to a target language. This process occurs without human’s assistance. There are two forms of machine translation by means of which big texts could be translated at the same time.
The first type is transfer-based translators, which were created by linguists for determination of grammar rules of the source and target languages. The majority of machine translation are made by transfer-based machines.
The second type is data-driven translators or statistically based machine translators. It analyzes amounts of previously translated information and uses statistical methods for determination matches between the source language and target language. This translation costs less because it needs less time for development than transfer-based machine translation. However, these types of machine translation generate the translation of different quality.
Nowadays technical translators could use not only expensive linguistic software but also free on-line tools. Researchers claim that machinery translation could be quite effective. Moreover, if it combines with human interaction, the result could be qualitative. While, the machine cannot replace human, machinery translation has some advantages in comparison with human translation. For instance, information in the field of technical translation such as the stock market or prices changes constantly. The updating of this information by human costs expensive. The massive amount information that have to be translated over the short period should be translated by machine. This method economizes time and money.