Book Review: A Practical Guide to Scientific and Technical Translation: Publishing, Style and Terminology

Abstract

A Practical Guide to Scientific and Technical Translation: Publishing, Style and Terminology. James Brian Alexander Mitchell and Anca Irina Florescu-Mitchell. London: World Scientific; 2022. 200 pages. ISBN 981124314X In a conversational tone and sometimes being repetitive, which shows a fear that the readers do not grasp the real goal of A Practical Guide to Scientific and Technical Translation: Publishing, Style and Terminology or do not understand clearly their advice, James Brian Alexander Mitchell and Anca Irina Florescu-Mitchell use their experiences as researchers, reviewers, proofreaders, and translators to give detailed instructions for writing in English and producing technical and professional translations. Mitchell is a native English speaker who translates from French to English, and Florescu-Mitchell is a non-native English speaker who translates from French to English, English to French, and English/French to Romanian. I write this book review from the point of view of a non-native English speaker who writes my own articles in English and does professional translations from English to Portuguese. The book is divided into 2 parts. The first part, Direct Authoring, is devoted to helping scientists who are non-native speakers of English to write scientific papers. The second part, Technical Translation for Translators, provides guidance for professional translators of technical writing. According to the authors, “direct authoring” is when a non-native speaker, after deciding what to write in their paper, starts to write it directly in English. In this first part of the book, Mitchell and Florescu-Mitchell clarified that their goal is to help scientists to avoid […]