A Scientific Abstract: Challenges of Teaching and Translation

This paper sets out to share the results of research into reasons of mistakes made in English abstracts for Russian scientific writings published in peer-reviewed journals on linguistics and language teaching with a view to identifying most common difficulties that researches face when translating this type of text. The authors also seek to develop ways of preventing typical mistakes. The undertaken research is relevant, as it contributes to expanding knowledge in the field of teaching translation with regard to two current tendencies, namely the increasing number of scientific publications in the field of humanities and the tightening requirements for translated abstracts introduced by editorial boards of scientific journals. With both tendencies in view, careful attention to this type of scientific text is to be paid by curriculum and Master’s Degree programs developers, as well as the teaching staff responsible for professionally oriented translation, professional communication and other related subjects. The source of material for this research is published English abstracts to Russian articles on linguistic and language teaching issues. The main research methods are comparative, linguo-stylistic and semantic analysis. As a result of the study most common lexical and grammatical mistakes are revealed, systematized and described. General conclusions are made and recommendations for coping with translation challenges are given, which contributes both to the theory and practice of translating scientific texts.

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