Science & Technology Division Webmaster

Many of us are gearing up for the ATA Annual Conference next week. San Diego here we come!  We will start by mingling during the Opening Reception and at the S&TD table Division Open house on Wednesday to reconnect with our friends and colleagues. Let’s see if can match the fun we had with the marble run last year. In spite of the hectic atmosphere, we should all manage to meet a few old friends and some new ones there and perhaps plan calmer meals and chats for later in the week! The Leadership Council hopes that you are pleased …

Science & Technology Click on the speaker name to view bio. ST-1 Translating for the Design and Construction Professions in Israel Don Jacobson (Thursday, 11:00am-12:00pm; All Levels; Presented in: English) Israel has recently undergone far-reaching changes in large-scale infrastructure and commercial construction projects. Foreign investment and professional partnering play a growing role in the Israeli economy, while Israeli developers and engineering firms increase their activities abroad. This activity has brought with it the need for high-quality technical translation in order to facilitate communication among partners, enable new players to enter the economy, and improve local technical capacity in fields previously …

S&TD has arranged a special event during the upcoming San Diego conference. Please join members of our group for superb Mexican-French cuisine and S&TD networking at the upscale Candelas Restaurant in the Gaslamp District.  If you would like to attend you need to reserve a spot and submit payment in advance, as described below.  WHEN Thursday, October 25 (7:30PM until 10:30PM) WHERE Candelas Gaslamp District Restaurant 416 3rd Avenue (within walking distance of the hotel) San Diego, CA 92101 619-702-4455 https://www.candelas-sd.com/candelas_main2.html   MENU Appetizer Choice of Caesar salad or Tortilla soup Entree Choice of: Breast of chicken with red mole …

By Abigail Dahlberg, German-English Environmental Translations As the world starts to run short on raw materials, industry and policy-makers are increasingly looking to waste to bridge the gap. This state of affairs has sparked somewhat of an identity crisis for the waste management industry, which is now struggling to define when a waste becomes a secondary raw material. This is also reflected into the terminology that is now in use: Fewer and fewer texts refer to “garbage” (US English) or “rubbish”. Instead, businesses prefer to put on a positive spin and refer to recycled raw materials or secondary raw materials. …

By Carola F. Berger, Ph.D. The physics blogosphere is currently buzzing with wild rumors about a possible announcement of the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson (AKA the “God particle”) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. The rumors are so substantial that even mass media such as the New York Times have been picking up the news. CERN issued a press release   https://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR16.12E.html, announcing an update on the Higgs search on July 4, at the biggest particle physics conference of the year, ICHEP in Melbourne, Australia. The discovery of this particle may have important consequences …

Another presentation for the Science and Technology Division during ATA:s 53:rd Annual Conference will be given by Nicholas Hartmann, a German, French and Italian into English translator. Here is a short introduction of the presentation. Most of us who are planning to attend the 2012 ATA Conference will arrive in San Diego on a commercial airplane. To find out more about the technology that has made air travel an everyday reality, and to learn why and how an airplane stays up in the air and gets you where you’re going, come to a presentation entitled “An Introduction to Aviation and Air Travel” …

During the summer we will introduce some of the Science and Technology Divisions presentations during ATA:s 53:rd annual conference in San Diego this fall. Tapani Ronni, a member of the ATA Science and Technology Division, and an English into Finnish medical translator, will give a presentation on the basics of immunology. It was originally submitted for the Science and Technology Division but the conference organizers decided it would be better suited for Medical Division. It is still well worth attending. Here is a brief introduction of the presentation from Tapani. This one-hour presentation will cover the fundamental concepts of immunology. It will …

By Karen Tkaczyk Every so often you read an article and wish you’d written something like it. This happened to me recently, with the piece called “Big Pharma Cannot Afford to be Lost in Translation” by Portuguese translator and consultant Cristina Falcão. It can be found here, on the PharmaIQ website https://www.pharma-iq.com/medical-devices-and-diagnostics/columns/big-pharma-cannot-afford-to-be-lost-in-translation/ . If you translate for the pharmaceutical industry you will find other insightful articles and useful resources there, including others by Cristina. I contacted Cristina to ask her if she minded me reporting on her article to the ATA Science and Technology Division’s blog and adding a few thoughts …

Written by Dorothee Racette, President of the American Translators Association. With an increasing number of companies pursuing a presence for their products in other countries, your management team’s global strategy may involve the need to translate technical and support materials into other languages. This article describes ten effective steps technical writers, publishers, or communications managers can take to ensure that technical translation projects go smoothly and to everyone’s satisfaction. Steps to Take Before the Actual Translation 1. Plan Ahead for Technical Translation Investing a few hours of your time in the preparation of the technical translation project will pay off …

By João Roque Dias, CTTechnical TranslatorLisbon – Portugal www.jrdias.com Edited by Peter InghamLisbon – Portugalpeter.ingham@netcabo.pt So, what are technical manuals? They are not some literary work with a few technical buzzwords. They’re simply a roadmap for the user of the system they refer to. Their purpose is to convey information. Remember: you don’t read technical manuals for pleasure; you USE technical manuals because you NEED TO KNOW what they tell you. The translators of technical manuals must keep this in perspective. Otherwise, they become useless pieces of cheap literature. Who writes technical manuals? Professional technical writers with in-depth knowledge of …