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I am currently in the process of translating a lecture on the étale topology by John Hubbard from French into English (and from transparencies into Beamer). For the most part, the translation is going smoothly, but sometimes I wish I had more resources for translating technical terms.

Now I'm wondering: what are some resources which you have found useful for mathematical translation? For a given language, what are some of the tricky terms which deviate the most from English?

edited Dec 21 at 2:50

Charles Siegel

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2 revisions, 2 users
Matt Noonan 100%

Joke about affine group action. – fpqc Jan 8 at 4:59

Alison Miller · Answer 1 · 2009-12-21 02:53:21Z UTC

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I've found the German math word list here to be quite useful.

answered Dec 21 at 2:53

Alison Miller

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Ben Weiss · Answer 2 · 2009-12-21 04:15:49Z UTC

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I've found that Google has a translator application which is wonderful. If you type in a sentence, it does the correct translation; it has even known mathematical terms when presented in the correct context. It is my first resource for help with translations.

answered Dec 21 at 4:15

Ben Weiss

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Yes I like Google translator very much. If you want to translate huge blocks of text, it is not much harder, you can cheat Google's "word limit" - all you have to do is get a Gmail account, email yourself a fairly large block (10 pages or so is perfectly fine) of text in the other language, and then when you view the message, you will have the option of viewing it in the other language. – rajamanikkam Dec 21 at 5:02

I am amazed that it managed to distinguish between variety and manifold! – Sam Derbyshire Dec 21 at 22:45

Ryan Budney · Answer 3 · 2009-12-21 02:25:31Z UTC

I think the Cornell mathematics library has a little math technobabble dictionary for converting between various standard languages like English, French and German.

Ask at the desk. If that doesn't work, ask Jim West because I think he's the guy that pointed it out to me. It used to be on that central shelf that's sitting in front of the main door to the library.

edit: if you find out the name of the dictionary, please post it here.

José Figueroa-O'Farrill · Answer 4 · 2009-12-21 03:58:21Z UTC

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For a given language, what are some of the tricky terms which deviate the most from English?

That seems like a rather open-ended question. Why don't you post specific words you are having difficulty with and perhaps people here can help you translate them?

answered Dec 21 at 3:58

José Figueroa-O'Farrill

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There wasn't a particular instance of translation trouble which I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of things like variété <--> manifold, where the obvious translation to English is in fact wrong. I recall seeing more instances of this, particularly in French, but can't come up with them off the top of my head. It would be nice to have a short list of common "gotchas" in translation. – Matt Noonan Dec 21 at 4:39

Bossykena · Answer 5 · 2009-12-21 21:55:28Z UTC

For translation to and from French, I'd recommend GrandDictionnaire.com. It's generally quite complete for technical and scientific terms (including mathematics). Descriptions are in French though.

(And it has the correct answer to your example of variété/manifold)

What are some good resources for mathematical translation?

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