Images as part of technical translation courses: implications and applications

Abstract

Images are often part of the textual structure of Scientific and Technical texts. The understanding and interpretation of the text often depends on the way the interface between the text and the image is established. Despite the key role images play in specialised translation, there is a lot of work to be done to increase awareness about the role images play in communicating science and technology. This paper reports on an innovative teaching project comprising research on the text-image interface and on the way verbal and on-verbal information is integrated in texts. The paper also presents methodological issues and activities developed to understand the role of images in decoding the source text and encoding the target text in Scientific and Technical Translation. Special attention has been paid to describing protocols for information contained in images in order to make them accessible to the visually impaired