Customer Reviews

Dictionary of Omissions for Russian Translators With Examples from Scientific Texts: With Examples from Scientific Texts

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Isidore Geld's "Dictionary of Omissions for Russian Translators" is a MUST for every RU-EN translator, be he/she either a seasoned professional or a newbee. The dictionary, though having some drawbacks (misspellings, and the cross-references could have been better organized), is still a very valuable tool because it opens the eyes of the translator to one truth: never believe that you know everything, because there is a lot you don't know, so learning must be continuous. In summarizing, its a pity that I didn't have this dictionary on my desk 10 years ago.

This is a specialist book for translators from Russian to English. It has examples from scientific texts, but the information contained is equally valid for informational and academic texts of all types. Most interesting are the General Omission Rules on pages 156-157 which lay out some general principles. The argument put forward by the author is that the structure of Russian academic discourse is such that, in order to carry the discourse forward, Russian inserts more "dummy" words and process words than is usual in English. With a little training, translators can learn to distinguish these words with confidence and eliminate them without losing the sense of the translation in English.