From July 22nd to 24th, a team from Translate Science taught an online introduction to the basics of translation (course E07) at the FORCE11 summer school FSCI2025. The course, though only 3 hours in time altogether, covered quite a lot of ground.
The first day (slides) outlined what translation is… and also what it is not! Participants were invited to reflect on some common misperceptions about translation (e.g. translation is about word-for-word substitution; any bilingual person can translate; AI will replace translators) before discussing how context, culture, and domain knowledge are all needed to effectively translate a message, rather than just words. Also, in order to appropriately formulate the message, a lot of research into linguistic conventions, terminology and other factors is required – especially for highly specialized content such as research.
The second day (slides) participants learned about various online tools for research, such as the WIPO multilingual terminology portal, but also to lesser known tools such as Diatopix which displays the use of terminological variants according to world regions for the languages English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The latter point highlights a general problem with regard to science translation: If aimed at a world-wide population, how should science translation handle such variation?
The third day (slides) was devoted to the topic of machine translation. The presentation highlighted some general problems of artificial ‘intelligence’, e. g., that it is often hard to figure out which parameters a machine actually uses for a decision. A notable case with regard to machine translation is that of gender bias: When translating from a language with little or no gender marking into a language with more gender marking, stereotypes often show in the result. While a physics professor will almost certainly be translated into the male word for ‘professor’ in German, a gender studies professor is more likely to be rendered with the female variant for ‘professor’.
For the course organisers, the summer school was very rewarding because the participants in course (and the event as a whole) are mainly library and information science (LIS) professionals, a group of stakeholders that Translate Science hasn’t yet addressed to the same extent as scientists. Interesting questions that were raised included how to make publications more attractive for and relevant to translation, or how to deal with copyright issues, as well as multilingual metadata.
But it wasn’t all work and no play… participants were challenged to adapt the short phrase “Translation FUNdamentals” into another language, and they rose to the challenge with creative flair!
It was heartening to see the degree to which LIS professionals care about and are interested in engaging with translation in the context of scholarly communication. Translate Science intends to build on the lessons learned from the course and to look for more opportunities to connect with the LIS community. We’re excited that our proposal has been accepted to offer an expanded, hybrid version of the workshop at the January 2026 FORCE11 Scholarly Communication Institute (FSCI), part of Charleston Conference Asia.
