Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

The Applicability of Skopos Theory to Technical Translation 
There are claims that Skopos theory produces “mercenary” translators who 
are, in effect, only interested in pleasing their paymasters (Pym 1996:338). 
This is untrue for a number of reasons. The “dogma” referred to by New-
mark (1990:105) simply does not exist. Also, Nord (1997:118-119) main-
tains that translators are only mercenaries when they do not use their own 
judgement as language professionals to argue for doing something a particu-
lar way. 
It can also be argued that Skopos promotes or even depends on adapta-
tion and as such cannot really be regarded as translation. This is not, strictly 
speaking, true. Granted, in some rather extreme cases there may be several 
quite drastic modifications needed in order to ensure that a translation fulfils 
its Skopos and meets the needs of the addressees/users, but in the vast ma-
jority of cases (at least in my experience as a professional technical transla-
tor), there is only rarely a need for wholesale modification or rewriting to 
the extent that the translation has only the most vague link with the origi-
nal text. 
This is precisely why Nord (1997:125) introduces the notion of “func-
tion plus loyalty” to Skopos theory mentioned above. This is intended to 
ensure that even though there may be significant differences between the 
source and target texts, the needs of the key stakeholders are met.
The fact that Skopos theory states translations must be produced “in ac-
cordance with some principle respecting the target text” (Vermeer 1989: 
182) which must be decided separately in the translation brief for each spe-
cific case could be regarded as something of a shortcoming of Skopos the-
ory. The reason being that it introduces an element of subjectivity into the 
process and is not always repeatable. However, this is not unique to Skopos 
theory and is inherent to many other approaches to translation. Conse-
quently, this has to remain a necessary confound in the equation. 

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44 Technical Translation