Technical English

The great technical and scientific achievements of our age have urged very many people to study foreign languages. Besides students and postgraduates of institutions of higher learning, foreign languages are studied by people of different profession, for they find that many of the books written on their subjects are in English. French or German. Nowadays technical English is very popular in our country.

Let us examine the relation between ordinary English and technical English. Let us see what common features they have, what the peculiarities of technical English are. Vocabulary, grammar and style are factors to be taken into consideration.

There are a number of reasons why technical writing is rather difficult. But it is not so very different from those everyday phrases and sentences which the students learn in class.

If you want to understand technical English, you've got to have a thorough knowledge of ordinary everyday sentences with their grammatical constructions, their vocabulary and rules of word-building.

When speaking we normally use short sentences. It often happens that we start saying one thing and then change our minds half-way through, and finish by saying something different. To make ourselves clearer we often repeat what we have said or make ourselves clearer by gestures, or by the tone of our voice.

It goes without saying that we cannot do such things when we write. Everything has to be thought out carefully before we begin. The words we intend to use have to be more precise, and our sentences more carefully constructed.

Everyday English is mostly about people, their activities and their feelings. Therefore we can say that it is quite personal. But scientific and technical writing is usually about things, matter, natural processes, and tries to be very impersonal. The scientist usually keeps himself, his

feelings and his personality out of his work. He regards himself as an observer only. He records what exists or what happens, as if he himself were absent. This impersonal attitude of the scientist and engineer towards their subject makes a considerable difference to the language habit and patterns they use in writing, and. to some extent, in speaking.

While carrying on an ordinary conversation we usually use the active form. In technical English the process the writer describes sounds is mechanical, unchanging and inhuman. The one who does the writing tries to disappear from the scene. For this reason the passive form is commonly used in such sentences as: This was done. That was taken. But not: I did it. or / took it.

You will hardly ever find a sentence beginning with T Instead, you have the impersonal Mt': it is suggested, it can be stated, it is expected, it is evident,, etc. The scientist, being interested in the causes of things, usually uses in sentences: by. by means of, due to. thanks to. because of, by virtue of, owing to, etc.

Isolated facts or events are seldom dealt with by the engineer, usually it is a whole series of connected events that have to be described. Besides, the engineer has to show what the connection is. He may have to show not only what happens, but also how it happens, when it happens, why it happens, and what the effect of it is. All these are usually lied closely together, and cannot be talked about separately.

The problem of vocabulary causes a lot of difficulty, though it is not the only problem that matters. One cannot follow a technical discussion or read a technical book unless one knows the words and expressions that are being used. Scientists, in trying to define things accurately, have been making up technical words for hundreds of years. At present a very' great number of new words are needed as new fields of science open and new discoveries are made.

In using ordinary language we help our listeners to form pictures in their minds that are exactly the same as the pictures in our own minds. Street, house, bridge, magazine, woman, man, children are very easy pictures to see. But technical words often mean complicated things and processes. Therefore it takes the listeners mind a little longer to see these pictures. One has to be very familiar with the things technical words describe, and only then the picture-building becomes automatic.

Each branch of science and technology has its separate vocabulary. Chemists and doctors use many of the same words, and so do geologists and engineers. But fortunately for all of us. the number of words one has to know in any particular science is limited. Besides, many of these highly

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technical terms are more or less similar in several languages. This is usually because the words have been built up from Greek or Latin roots. If you know the subject well in your own language, you will recognize many of the technical words when you read them in English. The only difficulty is to pronounce them correctly.

Examples: electrolysis, condenser, magnesium, convulsive.

More than half of all the vocabulary of science comes from a Greek-Latin group, and is therefore quite likely to be international. Another group of words we are interested in are the semi-technical ones; they are not big and frightening words to look at, but they sometimes cause great difficulty to the Russian student.

Such words as movement, moment, work, power, energy, fracture, valve, junction, flux, load, stress, strain, etc. are semi-technical words for two reasons. First, because a large number of them were not made specially for a definite scientific purpose, but have simply been borrowed from our everyday English. They may be very familiar in everyday life, but when they are used in a scientific context, they may have a different meaning altogether. The word power, for example, is very common in ordinary speech, but it has a very special meaning in mathematics, and another special meaning in engineering. The second reason why they are called semi-technical is that they are often more general in their application, and many of them will be extremely useful no matter what your subject is. Words, for example, like temperature, diameter, plastic, agent, atom, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, etc. are part of the common vocabulary of all the scientists.

There are also many words which have become part and parcel of the phraseology of scientific writing and communication, and you may not very often find them in ordinary speech, or writing. Most of them are rather heavy words coming from Greek or Latin. In everyday use we would normally find shorter words to say the same thing.

Example: Steam is exhausted from the cylinder —Steam is pushed out of the cylinder.

The simple phrases are sometimes used in lectures or when an engineer or a scientist is explaining how things work.

At present great work is being carried out not only in making the existing terms more precise, but also in reducing their existing number.

Предпереводческий анализ текста

Прежде чем приступить к переводу текста, нужно сделать его предпереводческий анализ, который включает в себя следующие шаги:

355. Сбор внешней информации о тексте (автор, время написания и издания, цель перевода).

356. Определение источника и реципиента, чтобы получить верный ориентир в переводе.

357. Определение вида информации в тексте, чтобы в переводе оформить текст соответствующими языковыми средствами.

358. Формулировка коммуникативного задания и определение главной цели (доминанты) перевода.

Задание 5. Сделайте предпереводческий анализ текста.

The microchip is testament to the immense power of tiny things. Smaller than a penny, the chip, or integrated circuit, is quite literally the brain, heart and nervous system of every digital device on the planet. It powers computers, mobile phones, washer machines, even automobiles and satellites. They are used in the design of space stations, they guide planes safely in for a landing, they make it possible for us to watch hundreds of TV channels (as well as power the remote control too), and enable teenagers every day to log on to the Internet and chat with somebody half a world away. Since the widespread commercial introduction of the microchip in the early 1970s, there have been more medical, mathematic and scientific breakthroughs that in any other period of time, due in large part to the awesome computing power this thin silicone wafer has brought us.

The microchip's main accomplishment is ushering us into the era of personal computing, one that would have seemed inconceivable just 30 years ago. Without the chip, most every mechanism that modern society has come to rely on - from jumbo jets to stereo Hi-Fis - would come to a grinding halt. With tens of billions of chips in the world running most every imaginable machine, many scholars now rank the development of the microchip as one of humankind's greatest achievements. Without the almighty chip, we'd need an extra garage to store our computer, printer

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and fax machine: scientists would be decades behind on their research for life-threatening diseases and our homes would be devoid of such must-have modern conveniences as DVD players and microwave ovens. For many of us, the concept of such a world would seem cruel and unimaginable. Thankfully, we don't have to worry.

The typical chip is an engineering marvel. Work began on the microchip in the late 1950s by electrical engineers Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce and has never let up. In the past 50 years, it has become the obsession of computer scientists and researchers across the globe to constantly improve its design in an effort to fit more computing power on a tinier surface. The chip, or integrated circuit, contains millions of interconnected transistors crammed into a few millimetres of a silicon wafer that is typically one-square centimetre in size. The most advanced chips, called microprocessors, are capable of calculating several million instructions in a split second, enabling computers and digital devices to process vast bits of information in the blink of an eye. Such number crunching can produce startling heat. But modern chip design, primarily utilising heat-absorbing silicon wafers, have all but eliminated this concern. It was the switch to this revolutionary semiconductor material, first identified a half-century ago. that made modern chips possible and. in the process, eliminated the old finger-sized vacuum tubes that powered the world's first automobile-sized computers and relic appliances. Compared to the transistor, the chip is vastly cheaper and easier to reproduce, it is a fraction of the size, consumes less power, can compute vastly more complicated calculations at blazing speeds, and for its diminutive size, is incredibly reliable. Not bad for a wafer less than a millimetre thick!

The short history of the microchip is marked with revolutionary change. And yet. scientists aren't through yet. Advancement in chip design is progressing so rapidly that computing power from these miniscale wafers continues to grow exponentially every few years. Intel scientist Oordon Moore first observed that the growth of complexity of integrated circuits follows a trend. The number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years making computers and digital devices ever more powerful. Intel's current powerhouse chip, the Pentium II processor, contains 7.5 million transistors and can perform up to 300 million instructions every second - or about 5,000 times the speed of the original chips introduced on the market in the early 1970s. The rapid innovation may be baffling to some consumers. But for gadget fans, it all means you

can now store and watch the latest Hollywood blockbusters on an iPod-sized gadget. In fact, if current trends hold true consumers will be able to earn around all their documents, photos, favourite music and movies in a pocket-sized device. New chips are being designed for products that don't require a plug or battery power. Microscopic chips capable of storing vast bits of information are being embedded into passports and credit cards too as a security precaution and anti-fraud measure. Also, manufacturers are slipping tiny chips, known as RFID tags, into their products to track the flow of how many shirts, cereal boxes and handbags they sell. The same chips can track stolen products.

So when you're zapping through hundreds of TV channels, surfing the Web or the next time you board a plane, give a moment's thought to the fathers of the microchip. Kilby and Noyce. Their obsession with vast computing power in a tiny package has powered the world into the ultra­modern era.

technology.timesonline.со.uk'secliowO,,20749,00.html

Задание 6. Выберите текст no изучаемой вами специальности и сделайте его предпереводческий анализ.

IS Основные особенности выполнения полного письменного перевода научно-технического текста

Об основных языковых средствах, при помощи которых оформляется научно-технический текст, рассказывалось выше. Следует также запомнить следующие правила.

Перевод заголовка, если он раскрывает сущность вопроса, должен быть близок к оригиналу, если же он отличается краткостью, переводчик вносит в него краткую аннотацию для дальнейшего использования его в информационных целях. Все сокращения, встречающиеся в тексте оригинала, должны быть расшифрованы в соответствии с общепринятыми и специальными сокращениями. Сокращения, не поддающиеся расшифровке, остаются на языке оригинала. В тексте перевода остаются в оригинальном написании: слова и предложения не на языке оригинала: сокращенные наименования марок изделий и приборов;

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названия иностранных печатных изданий.

В тексте перевода переводятся:

названия частей и отделов учреждений и организаций;

названия должностей, званий, ученых степеней, титулов:

собственные имена и названия в соответствии с установившейся

практикой.

В тексте перевода транскрибируются:

иностранные фамилии, собственные имена и названия с учетом

традиционного написания известных фамилий;

артикли и предлоги в иностранных фамилиях;

наименования иностранных фирм, компаний, акционерных обществ.

корпораций, концернов, монополий, промышленных объединений:

союзы и предлоги в названиях фирм;

фирменные названия машин, приборов, химических веществ.

изделий, материалов.

В тексте перевода заменяются русскими эквивалентами:

научно-технические термины;

географические названия.

В тексте перевода сохраняется национальное своеобразие

специфических слов и выражений, связанных с особенностями быта

и общественной жизни. историей, географическими и

климатическими условиями.

Ш Л Задание 7. Прочитайте и переведите текст, следуя предложенному плану работы над текстом:

359. Просмотрите текст и постарайтесь понять его общее содержание, не вдаваясь в детали.

360. Обратите внимание на выделенные слова, определите из контекста, какой частью речи они являются, и найдите в словаре соответствующие этим словам значения.

361. Сделайте предпереводческий анализ текста.

362. Выберите любой фрагмент текста (800-900 печатных знаков) и сделайте его письменный перевод.

363. Прочитайте перевод, проверяя соответствие каждой фразы оригиналу.

364. Прочитайте письменный перевод и отредактируйте его без обращения к иностранному тексту. Исправьте не свойственные русскому языку выражения и обороты.

365. Перепишите готовый перевод.

Programs and Programming

A program is a set of instructions written in a language designed to make a computer perform a series of specified tasks. These instructions tell computers exactly what to do and exactly when to do it. A programming language is a set of grammar rules, characters, symbols, and words - the vocabulary - in which those instructions are written.

Programming is the designing and writing of programs. It is a process that involves much more than writing down instructions in a given language. The process begins with identifying how a program can solve a particular problem. It ends when the written documentation has been completed.

The program development cycle involves five processes: problem definition, algorithm development, coding, program testing and debugging, and documentation.

Defining the Problem

The first step in developing a computer program is determining exactly what it is that you want the computer program to do. What tasks will it perform? What kind of data will it use. and where will it get its data from? What will be the output of the program? How will the program interact with the computer user? Answering these questions, and thereby defining exactly what you want the computer to do, is what we call defining the problem.

To define the problem, programmers meet with the intended users to develop the program's objectives. The resulting outline includes information about what the output should look like, what kind of data the program will use as input, and the processing requirements (how the data will be manipulated and what kind of hardware will be used to run the application). The more information programmers can learn at the beginning of the programming process, and the more specific that information is. the more likely the resulting application will meet users' needs.

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To help in defining the problem, users are also asked to draw a picture of how they wish the final output to appear. The programmer can then begin to plan what input, data, and processing are necessary to get the desired results from the application.

Constructing the Algorithm

An algorithm is a prescribed set of well-defined instructions for solving a problem in a finite number of steps. The programmer, knowing how a microcomputer works, decides how data must be entered, how they must be processed, and how the data must be presented to produce the required output. The algorithm spells out when the computer is to start and stop the program, where input is needed, where output is needed, when to perform arithmetic operations, and when to perform comparison operations. It also indicates what the microcomputer is to do if certain answers are derived from these operations.

In constructing the algorithm, programmers use the techniques of top-down design. Top-down design is the process of starting with the most general outline of how the algorithm will work, refining it by sketching in the details on smaller and smaller scales. Once a general outline is constructed, the programmer treats each of the steps as another algorithm to be developed and thus creates an algorithm for executing all the steps in the general outline.

Coding

Coding is the process of translating the algorithm into the syntax (grammar) of a given programming language. In developing its programs, a software publishing company often specifies that its programmers must use a particular language, especially as most major applications are a group effort that involves many programmers, independent software developers often choose a favorite language to work with for most of their projects. In some cases (such as a program developed for a specific client), which programming language to use is decided according to the needs of the user, who may refine or modify the program later. When possible, the decision should be made objectively: different programming languages have their strong and weak points that make them better for some programming tasks, worse for others. In any case, selecting a programming language is a crucial decision in the program development cycle.

Testing and Debugging

Program testing means running the program, executing all its instructions, and testing its logic by entering sample data to check the output. Debugging is the process of finding and correcting program code mistakes. The term comes from an episode in the early days of modern computing when programmers for the Mark I computer in 1945 were trying to discover why their program didn't work. Examining the computer, they found a moth stuck between the contacts of an electrical relay. Nowadays any error in code is called a bug. Two general types of errors are syntax errors and logic errors.

A syntax error is a transgression (breaking) of the grammar rules of the programming language. As will all languages, programming languages have rules of grammar. A programming language's grammar is stricter than most languages, however, and any deviation from the rules causes a program to not work.

A logic error is a transgression of the basic logic structure. It can involve missing a step in the algorithm, having an error in the algorithm's logic structure, using an erroneous formula, or any number of other subtle problems with the design or executing or the program steps. If the microcomputer cannot follow the logic, at some point the program will not operate properly. Logic errors can be so serious that entire programs must be redone.

Ш » Задание 8. Выберите один из предложенных научно-технических текстов и выполните следующие задания:

366. Сделайте предпереводческий анализ текста.

367. Письменно переведите отрывок (800-900 печатных знаков) текста.

Текст 1. Manufacturing applications of automation and robotics

One of the most important application areas for automation technology is manufacturing. To many people, automation means manufacturing automation. In this section, the types of automation are defined, and examples of automated systems used in manufacturing are described.

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Three types of automation in production can be distinguished: (1) fixed automation, (2) programmable automation, and (3) flexible automation.

Fixed automation, also known as "hard automation," refers to an automated production facility in which the sequence of processing operations is fixed by the equipment configuration. In effect, the programmed commands are contained in the machines in the form of cams, gears, wiring, and other hardware that is not easily changed over from one product style to another. This form of automation is characterized by high initial investment and high production rates. It is therefore suitable for products that are made in large volumes. Examples of fixed automation include machining transfer lines found in the automotive industry, automatic assembly machines, and certain chemical processes.

Programmable automation is a form of automation for producing products in batches. The products are made in batch quantities ranging from several dozen to several thousand units at a time. For each new batch, the production equipment must be reprogrammed and changed over to accommodate the new product style. This reprogramming and changeover take time to accomplish, and there is a period of nonproductive time followed by a production run for each new batch. Production rates in programmable automation are generally lower than in fixed automation, because the equipment is designed to facilitate product changeover rather than for product specialization. A numerical-control machine tool is a good example of programmable automation. The program is coded in computer memory for each different product style, and the machine tool is controlled by the computer program. Industrial robots are another example.

Flexible automation is an extension of programmable automation. The disadvantage with programmable automation is the time required to reprogram and change over the production equipment for each batch of new product. This is lost production time, which is expensive. In flexible automation, the variety of products is sufficiently limited so that the changeover of the equipment can be done very quickly and automatically. The reprogramming of the equipment in flexible automation is done off­line: that is, the programming is accomplished at a computer terminal without using the production equipment itself. Accordingly, there is no

need to group identical products into batches; instead, a mixture of different products can be produced one right after another.

hard automation - жесткая автоматизация

in effect - в действительности, в сущности, на

самом делеgear - шестеренка

cam - кулачок

robotics - робототехника

Текст 2. Properties of Steel

The major component of steel is iron, a metal that in its pure state is not much harder than copper. Omitting very extreme cases, iron in its solid state is. like all other metals, polycrystalline-that is, it consists of many crystals that join one another on their boundaries. A crystal is a well-ordered arrangement of atoms that can best be pictured as spheres touching one another. They are ordered in planes, called lattices, which penetrate one another in specific ways. For iron, the lattice arrangement can best be visualized by a unit cube with eight iron atoms at its corners. Important for the uniqueness of steel is the allotropy of iron-that is, its existence in two crystalline forms. In the body-centred cubic (bcc) arrangement, there is an additional iron atom in the centre of each cube. In the face-centred cubic (fee) arrangement, there is one additional iron atom at the centre of each of the six faces of the unit cube. It is significant that the sides of the face-centred cube, or the distances between neighbouring lattices in the fee arrangement, are about 25 percent larger than in the bcc arrangement: this means that there is more space in the fee than in the bcc structure to keep foreign (i.e., alloying) atoms in solid solution. Iron has its bcc allotropy below 912 С (1,674 F) and from 1.394 С (2,541 F) up to its melting point of 1,538 С (2,800 F). Referred to as ferrite, iron in its bcc formation is also called alpha iron in the lower temperature range and delta iron in the higher temperature zone. Between 912 and 1,394 С iron is in its fee order, which is called austenite or gamma iron. The allotropic behaviour of iron is retained with few exceptions in steel, even when the alloy contains considerable amounts of other elements. There is also the term beta iron, which refers not to mechanical properties but rather to the strong magnetic characteristics of iron. Below 770 С (1,420 F), iron is ferromagnetic; the temperature above which it loses this property is often called the Curie

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point As an indication of the relative importance of this material, in 1989 the world's steel production was about 770 million tons, while production of the next most important engineering metal, aluminum, was about 18 million tons. The main reasons for the popularity of steel are the relatively low cost of making, forming, and processing it. the abundance of its two raw materials (iron ore and scrap), and its unparalleled range of mechanical properties.

bcc - body-centered cubic - объёмно-центрированный

кубический (о кристаллической решетке)

fee - face-centered cubic - гранецентрированный кубический (о

кристаллической решётке)

face - грань

foreign atom - примесный атом

solid solution - твёрдый раствор

gamma iron - гамма-железо

unparalleled - не имеющий себе равного,

беспримерный, бесподобный

Текст 3 Mining and Concentrating

Most iron ores are extracted by surface mining. Some underground mines do exist, but, wherever possible, surface mining is preferred because it is cheaper As-mined iron ore contains lumps of varying size, the biggest being more than 1 metre (40 inches) across and the smallest about I millimetre (0.04 inch). The blast furnace, however, requires lumps between 7 and 25 millimetres, so the ore must be crushed to reduce the maximum particle size. Crushed ore is divided into various fractions by passing it over sieves through which undersized material falls. In this way. lump or rubble ore (7 to 25 millimetres in size) is separated from the fines (less than 7 millimetres). If the lump ore is of the appropriate quality, it can be charged to the blast furnace without any further processing. Fines, however, must first be agglomerated, which means reforming them into lumps of suitable size by a process called sintering.

sieve - фильтр

sintering- обжиг, агломерация

Текст 4. The Accounting Equation and the Balance Sheet

Accounting is often said to be the language of business. It is used in the business world to describe the transactions entered into by all kinds of organizations. Accounting terms and ideas are therefore used by people associated with business, whether they are managers, owners, investors, bankers, lawyers, or accountants. As it is the language of business there are words and terms that mean one thing in accounting, but whose meaning is completely different in ordinary language usage. Fluency comes, as with other languages, after a certain amount of practice. When fluency has been achieved that person will be able to survey the transactions of businesses, and will gain a greater insight into the way that business is transacted and the methods by which business decisions are taken.

The actual record-making phase of accounting is usually called book­keeping. However, accounting extends far beyond the actual making of records. Accounting is concerned with the use to which these records are put. their analysis and interpretation. An accountant should be concerned with more than the record-making phase. In particular he should be interested in the relationship between the financial results and the events which have created them. He should be studying the various alternatives open to the business, and be using his accounting experience in order to aid the management to select the best plan of action for the business. The owners and managers of a business will need some accounting knowledge in order that they may understand what the accountant is telling them. Investors and others will need accounting knowledge in order that they may read and understand the financial statements issued by the business, and adjust their relationships with the business accordingly.

Probably there are two main questions that the managers or owners of a business want to know: first, whether or not the business is operating at a profit: second, they will want to know whether or not the business will be able to meet its commitments as they fall due. and so not have to close down owing to lack of funds. Both of these questions should be answered by the use of the accounting data of the firm.

accounting equation - бухгалтерская сбалансированность

дебета и кредитаbalance sheet - бухгалтерский баланс

book-keeping - счетоводство, бухгалтерия

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financial statements - финансовый отчет