Science exists mainly in English and for many this fact entails a bunch of translation between their mother tongue and the lingua franca. It often happens that as a student you write your papers in your native language whereas the articles you read are in English. Or, say you want to submit your thesis you wrote for your university to Journal of European Psychology Students and now need to translate the whole thing to English. How to ensure the best translation to or from English?
There are some great dictionaries online but Linguee surely offers a great tool to make sure your translation is really a used term in the literature. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a dictionary, it’s, let’ say, a phrasebook. When you search for a term or a phrase it compares it to millions of bilingual texts, such as EU documents or patent specifications to find how your search has been used and in which context. So as their webpage says, Linguee helps you to find:
- In which context a translation is used
- How frequent a particular translation is
- Example sentences: How other people translated an expression
One phrase can be translated in many ways and it entails different meanings. This tool will help you to pick up the best suited form. Check out yourself! Linguee.com
Also, don’t forget to read the other tips JEPS Bulletin has published on the topic:
The Core Features of the Scientific Writing Style by Petra Kralj
The Core Features of the Scientific Writing Style II by Petra Kralj
How to make (scientific) texts sound professional? by Maris Vainre