Translation-Friendly Academic Writing in Social Sciences: Practical Strategies

Abstract

The purpose of academic writing is to convey scholarly knowledge and data to the intended audience in a concise and comprehensible way. Sometimes an academic text has to be translated into a foreign language by a translator. In this case, the translator is expected to translate the source text into the target text in plain and understandable language. This study illustrates how the author can help the translator during the process of preparing the source text and discusses the strategies that could be used to achieve this. What makes whether an academic translation is of lower or higher quality is not only the level of knowledge and skills that the translator possesses but also the quality of the source text. That is, the quality of the source text directly affects that of the output. In addition, academic writing has its own rules, and, albeit partially, this may differ from one language to another. In this sense, translators encounter some problems while translating academic texts. The purpose of this study is to illustrate such problems and to discuss the strategies that could be used to eliminate them. Common problems that affect the quality of translation are as follows: forming wordy sentences, using ambiguous expressions, organizing the text in a way that is not suitable for the discourse structure of English, using conjunctions imprecisely, using passive verbs unnecessarily, expressing thoughts indirectly instead of using direct language, using words with the same meaning sequentially and spelling mistakes, among others. This study discusses what the writer and the translator can do to improve an academic text in general. Although experienced translators may take effective actions, a good translation may not be possible out of a poorly written source text. High-quality academic translation requires a collaboration between the author and the translator. Therefore, it is important to raise awareness about this issue.