Most of research papers are available in English, however, we found papers that are sometimes much more related but unable to understand as these are not in English. Some papers may have their English versions but others don't. What should we do then? Should we use translation softwares like Google Translate? Should we just ignore them?
Please share your ideas and experiences so that junior researchers like us can benefit from your knowledge.
Best Regards
If the material is closely related to your own research and you are planning to cite particular passages in your own research a translation by a professional would be most advisable
It may depend on the languages involved. Translation between related languages, like between German and English, may be pretty good. I have found that machine translation from Chinese to English is unintelligible, except for very short sentences.
If the material is closely related to your own research and you are planning to cite particular passages in your own research a translation by a professional would be most advisable
Yes, google translator is not precise. It will generate missunderstandings.
The longest way - you study needed language :-)))
Thank you all for your valuable responses. However, there are a number of problems and issues in the mentioned solutions e.g., Google Translate is limited where you cannot directly translate the whole research paper, where only short sentences can be accurately translated as Michael W. Marek discussed. Contacting human language experts may not work in most cases, especially if these experts have tight schedule and unable to find time for translation. Similarly, as George Stoica said that even if human experts are involved, their translation cannot substitute the original text !
"Common linguistic expert" is not usually able to translate scientific text without your help.
For a translation from the national language into English you must usually do the translation yourself and then let it just adjust.
Yes, English today is what Latin once was in Europe, and many non English
speaking nations expect their researchers to publish in English....maybe they
cannot find journals in their own language to publish in.
There is usually enough in English to get by, but knowing other languages has its advantage.
Dear Irfan,
Even a professional translator can not translate the Scientific articles and information accurately without your help., even sometimes taking services of a professional translator does not feasible, In this situation i like to help of google translator and thereafter tries to interpret it. most of the time this works.
Thank you all for the valuable answers.
Any alternatives to Google Translation? I mean translation tool that is best not only at sentence level but also works fine at paragraph and page level in order to speed up the translation process.
I think that the texts of mathematics can be understood(included) in a certain degree. On the other hand, other one disciplines I don't think so.
Specialist articles will need translators that not only understand the words and syntax but moreso the context or background of the field that the article relates to. Words on their own can be ambiguous. Some non English medical journals do at least provide a part translation of their articles in English which I find very helpful. For the rest it is great to rely on international friends and collaboration. This yields far more than simply the understanding of otherwise inaccessible articles.
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