Science in School aims to promote inspiring science teaching across Europe. For this reason, we publish articles online in several European languages.

We are very grateful to all teachers and scientists who volunteer to translate articles in Science in School from English into their native languages. If you are interested in helping, please email us (editor@scienceinschool.org), detailing your language skills, involvement in science / science education and translation experience.

We will provide the English articles as Word (.doc) or rich text format (.rtf) files and the finished translations should be returned in this format. Please translate the whole article, including the title, 'translated by', introduction, figure legends and (if present) the review at the end. Each translated paragraph should be written next to the corresponding English paragraph in the tabulated article. This helps us to identify which paragraph is which. Please note that some words will have a special kind of formatting (in italics, underlined, or bold) - please maintain this formatting, as it helps us identify the corresponding words or phrases in your translation. We may, for example, want to attach a link to the words or phrases, as in the English original.

The translation should present the information in the original article concisely, accurately and comprehensibly. Science in School aims for an engaging, journalistic style, and this style should be maintained in translation. Avoid translating literally (word for word).

You are very welcome to make comments on the article or suggestions for improvements or further resources to include. However, please send us these suggestions in an email and do not add them to the translated article itself.

We feel that translating a review (for example of a book, CD-ROM or website) only really makes sense if the reviewed material is also available in the language that you are translating into. Those readers who cannot understand the review in one language (e.g. English), probably cannot appreciate the materials in that language either. If you do translate a review, please make sure you include the original (probably English) title, so that readers can find it.

Please do not translate or change the names of people mentioned in the articles. If you need to transliterate a person's name (if the language you are translating into does not use the Latin alphabet), make sure you include the original (Latin) name in brackets the first time it is mentioned in the main text.

If you translate the names of institutions / organisations / projects etc., make sure you include the original name in brackets.

In the References, Web references and Resources sections, do not translate references for books or articles. The title should remain in the original language (mostly English), unless the work is also published in the language into which you are translating (in which case, if you mention the version in that language, please also include the correct details for the translated version, e.g. publisher, publication year, ISBN number etc). If you do wish to give the translated title of the publication although it is not available in your language, please enclose it in brackets after the original title.

Finally, as we are not able to copyedit translations, we would be grateful if you could carefully check your text for spelling and grammatical errors. You may find it helpful to ask a friend to do this for you.

Common errors

Please be aware of the following common errors made by translators.

Failure to maintain the correct formatting

Here, the translator failed to embolden ‘selective pressure’:

Missing translation: referee’s country of origin

Because this was part of a French translation, 'Greece' should have been translated to 'Grèce':

Missing translation: ‘here’

In the references section, the word ‘here’ is often made into a hyperlink. Care should therefore be taken to ensure it is translated:

Useful links for translators

When translating our articles, you may find it helpful to use tools that can assist you in finding the right words. Please check how well they work though, and do rely on your own judgment and that of your friends and colleagues who help you proofread your translations.

Our Dutch translator Piet Das recommends LINGOES, a freely downloadable easy and intuitive dictionary and text translation software which offers lookup dictionaries, full text translation, translation of selected text and pronunciation of words in over 80 languages.

We strongly discourage you from using the full text translation function - as we strongly discourage you from using any full text translation function, such as Google translate, for the purposes of translating our articles - but the dictionary and translation function for selected words in LINGOES can indeed be very helpful.

German translators may want to try using LEO, a free online dictionary with a well-used forum for translators, in which trickier cases are being discussed.