Technical and Academic Writing in the education of translators

       Genre-based writing instruction is part of the technical translation curriculum at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The course called Professional Documentation (PD) fulfills this function.

       The main genre-related topics covered in the course are instructions, articles, reports, abstracts and proposals. This paper gives a detailed overview of two important genres: the abstract and the proposal.

       1. Introduction

       Technical Writing and Academic Writing often overlap. If we regard Technical Writing as “writing about a technical subject, intended to convey specific information to a specific audience for specific purpose" (Markel 1988), the second part of this definition is obviously true also to Academic Writing, i.e. it is conveying specific information to a specific audience for specific purpose. Certainly the topics and the audience are different in Technical and Academic Writing.

       Genre-based writing instruction is part of the technical translation curriculum at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE, formerly the Technical University of Budapest) Budapest, Hungary.

       This program contains courses preparing future translators to jobs that go beyond the borders of pure translation. One of these courses is the writing course containing both elements of Technical and Academic Writing that is called Professional Documentation (PD). PD is a course designed to make students of translation acquainted with those written genres of linguistic (interlingual) mediation, that are not translation, but which a translator may be required to write.

       Not all topics of the PD course are related to genres. The main genre-related topics covered in the course are the following.

       • Instructions

       • Scientific papers (articles)

       • Reports

       • Abstracts

       • Proposals

       Writing abstracts (abstracting) has special importance in BUTE translation curriculum as the state examination, which concludes the education of technical translators includes abstract writing. This means that an abstract of a technical article has to be prepared, where the abstract and the article are in different languages.

       Why should we include writing instruction in translation curricula?

       The reasons seem to be simple and obvious. On a general level we can say, that translators are specialized writers, thus getting acknowledged with written texts and producing them helps the students to become better translators.

       Writing instruction widens translation students’ professional horizon.It allows them to become acquainted with the characteristics of a number of new genres and equipped with the necessary skills to produce texts corresponding to these genres.

       By designing a number of assignments in which they have to decide, what is really important in a text and what is not, writing instruction can be formed in a way, that students concentrate on the notion of the importance of information.

       Encounters with new texts also develop the student's vocabulary in the target language. Dealing with genres helps the students to become an understanding of cultural differences that influence the quality of translation and which play also a role when someone prepares documents for translation (Maylath 1997).

       Benefits are especially visible if we speak about abstracting. Uso and Palmer (1998) enumerate these in connection with teaching English as a second language. These benefits are also valid if we teach abstracting to students of translation (who by the way often regard their training as an enhanced form of language learning).

       Abstracting exercises enhance reading

       and writing ability, engaging the students in activities that are communicative and in which they apply knowledge previously acquired.

       Abstracting not only emplo

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] 下一页