Certain problems of scientific and technical translation of regulatory documents

Abstract

The article describes some the certain problems of scientific and technical regulatory documentation translation. Currently, Ukraine continues to implement European directives by developing the national measurement standards harmonized with European ones. This process is complex and ambiguous, the problem of high-quality translation of international regulatory documents and the equivalence of texts of the standards is still far from a final decision.The main requirements for technical translations and the most significant difficulties accompanying this activity are considered. The differences between Ukrainian and English versions of technical texts are assessed. The state of scientific and technical terminological activity in the country is presented. The main factors contributing to this process are indicated: the ambiguity of terminology, the difficulty of harmonizing terminology in different fields of science and technology, duplication and different interpretations of the same terms in different standards.There are many examples of incorrect and inaccurate translations, as well as the ambiguity of the use of terms in some regulatory documents, technical descriptions — both in foreign and domestic. It is shown that sometimes incorrect translations distort the meaning of regulatory documents, which, in turn, complicates the work of metrologists, instrument manufacturers, etc.A small discussion is presented with specialists from the National University “Lviv Polytechnic” on the use of the terms ‟nevyznachenist vymiriuvan” and ‟nepevnist vymiriuvan” (Ukrainian synonymic terms for English term “measure¬ment uncertainty”).The ways of solving the problem of improving the quality of scientific and technical regulatory documents translation are proposed. The authors express their opinion on this issue and offer two partly opposite directions to solve this problem. The first way is more traditional and provides for the full development of the translation business, and the second one, on the contrary, proposes to issue normative documents in the original language and focus on raising the level of knowledge of foreign languages among specialists, especially in the technical aspect.