Giving warnings and advice
Technical texts help readers to do something correctly and safely. In addition to providing clear instructions explaining the correct procedure, it is often necessary to provide warnings outlining what not to do or explaining the potential risks associated with a particular procedure or product. Apart from a general desire that readers do not come to any harm, there are, as we noted earlier, various legal reasons for ensuring that any warning information in a text is both clear and effective. For this reason, translating warnings and advisory information is extremely important; in some cases, it can be a matter of life or death.
Knowing the different types of notices
When providing notices to readers, a range of words can be used to indicate the relative importance of the information. To provide effective notices it is important that you think about what these words actually mean and then prioritize them in order to use them properly. The following list illustrates how a typical hierarchy of notices might be constructed.
Note: This is used to remind readers of important information, to emphasize something or to highlight minor problems which may occur.
Warning: This is used to warn readers of the possibility of minor injury to themselves or to others.
Caution: This is used to warn readers of possible damage to equipment, data or other significant consequences of a particular procedure or course of action.
Danger: This is the most serious category of warning and is used to alert readers to the possibility of serious or fatal injuries to themselves or others.
When faced with some sort of notice in a text, it may be tempting to label everything as extremely important and use Caution or Danger for all notices. While it is often difficult to correctly ascertain the level of risk or danger involved, it is just as important not to overstate risks as it is not to understate them. Understating risks means readers may not take the risks seriously enough. Overstating risks, for example using Danger when Warning is more appropriate, lessens the impact of Danger when it actually is appropriate.
European Hazard Symbols
In the European Union, a series of symbols has been developed for the purposes of labeling hazardous materials. Each symbol appears on an orange background and is accompanied by a text description which explains the significance of the symbol. These descriptions are translated into most of the official languages of the EU and should be used wherever your language combination permits.
In the European Union, various descriptive phrases have been formulated for the different categories of hazardous materials and the risks they pose to health and safety. It is important to recognize that the precise wording of these phrases is important because it is tested, accurate, legal and recognizable. When translating descriptions relating to hazardous materials - for example packaging, data sheets, safety information, or documents relating to the approval of products - it is important that you use the same terminology and where appropriate the full wording of these descriptions.
Appendix provides translations of these descriptive phrases in a variety of EU languages as well as a list of safety and risk phrases in English. A more complete list of risk phrases and safety phrases is contained in the annexes of Commission Directive 2001/59/EC of 6 August 2001, which is published in the Official Journal of the European Communities (O.J. L 225/1)
Strategies
When translating descriptions of substances or warnings and hazards relating to their use, always use the same terminology as the official regulations and descriptions. For example, do not use substance if material is always used in similar warnings, or replace toxic with poisonous if official documents make a distinction between the two terms. The reasoning behind this is that terms used in official documents and descriptions have specific definitions and any synonyms may not have the same meaning or may render descriptions in texts invalid.
Use warning notices consistently throughout the document; do not translate the same notice differently in the same document.
In the case of descriptions of hazardous materials or descriptive text associated with hazard symbols, always try to find the official translation in your target
References to other documents
In various forms of technical documentation, authors will find it necessary to refer to other documents. In the case of academic publications, references may relate to books or journal articles, while technical specifications, tenders or instruction manuals may refer to standards, contracts, regulations or supplementary documents.
In some cases, official or commonly used translations may exist, in which case the name should simply be replaced but, in the majority of cases, the translator will need to decide what to do with the reference.
Strategies
Paraphrase: If the precise name of the document is not important in the context of the TL document, the name in the SL can be replaced with a descriptive phrase.
Retain: If the precise name of the document is important (e.g. a book, paper etc.) and the precise meaning is either unimportant or apparent from the context, the SL name can be retained without any form of explanation.
Retain and paraphrase: In cases where the SL name of the document is important but the nature of the text or the background of the target audience is such that the meaning of the SL name will not be immediately obvious, a combination of retaining the name and supplementing it with a descriptive paraphrase can be used. This means that readers will understand the name of the text but that they will also be able to identify the SL text if necessary. Depending on the point in a document where a publication name appears, the paraphrase can be incorporated into the sentence or, in the case of bullet lists, included in square brackets after the publication name.
In the case of academic publications, it is generally not necessary to translate the names of documents, as they usually only ever appear in the bibliography at the end of the document and rarely, if ever, in the body text. It may, however, be necessary to transliterate author and publication names when translating from one writing system to another.