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 …
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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” …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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We are passing on this message from Susanne van Eyl, Chair of the Mentoring Committee, on the new ATA mentoring program. Hi everyone: I wanted to take a moment to invite all interested members to consider the new mentoring program of ATA. We’ve used Courtney Searls-Ridge’s long-standing program and made changes and updates to find new ways to learn from and support each other. The biggest change is that all mentor/mentee pairs are slated to start and end their work at the same time each year: in mid-April. This is designed to build a strong community for mentees, many of …
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ATA Science and Technology Division had many interesting and valuable presentations during the 52nd annual conference and we hope for the same this year. Share your expertise while increasing your recognition in your field. Submit your proposal by March 12th.
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Division member Bruce Popp is giving a webinar for patent translators on March 22 through ATA. For more information and to register, please follow this link: ATA Webinar 107 Patents. Here is the abstract: To be patentable, an invention must be new. A frequent consequence of this is that the terminology used in a patent application that needs to be translated may also be new and poorly covered in secondary terminology resources such as online terminology databases, glossaries and dictionaries. Faced with this situation, a patent translator may need to identify and use primary sources and do their own research …
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We know from Karen Tkaczyk’s blog posts that one of her goals for 2011 was to improve her writing and editing skills[1] — but little did we know that she intended to improve ours as well! Karen is a French-into-English technical translator specializing in chemistry (industrial applications and IP) and related life sciences. Through her company, McMillan Translation[2], she also offers services in scientific and technical writing, copyediting, and localization from US to UK English. Plus, she is an engaging presenter. She held sway over the packed room, clearly comfortable with her material, and emphasized her points with humor and …