Instructions for Translators

Once we have received your signed agreement and confirmed your assignment, you can begin your translation, but before you do so, please read the guidelines below. You should take care to translate as accurately as you can, to retain the original formatting, and to render your translation in clear, correct, and modern English. We provide only minimal editing and count on translators to provide clean copy formatted according to our guidelines.

Note that If we do not receive your translation within a year of the initial assignment, we will contact you to see if you would like an extension or if you would prefer to have the assignment canceled. If at any time you find that you are unable to complete your assignment, please let us know so that we can make the article available to another volunteer.

All translations should be based on the copy of the first edition of the Encyclopédie digitized by the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago in PhiloLogic 4. You may find the Editor's Introduction to the ARTFL Encyclopédie Project helpful for understanding the structure of the articles themselves and, in particular, infelicities introduced in the digitization of the French version by ARTFL. Note that page images can be accessed by clicking on page numbers in the digitized version, such as [page 9:3].

 
GUIDELINES AND STYLE SHEET

Each translation should be submitted as a separate MS-Word document. If you are translating multiple articles with the same title, please submit each one as a separate document. Use the French title of the article to name your document with any helpful identifiers (author, category of knowledge) in parentheses. If you submit multiple translations attached to a single email, please put all the titles in the subject line of the email.

Label Article Translation Format Translator-Supplied Notes Instructions Specific to Translations of Plate Sets Resources for Translators Help Submitting Your Translation

 

 
<Label

Your document should begin with the following data, with the blanks filled in:

French Title: _____
English Title: _____
Link to stub in the EDD Collaborative Translation Project site: _____
Category of knowledge (if given): _____
Author (if known): _____

Translator: _____
Translator email: _____
Faculty supervisor and email (if applicable): _____

 

 
<Article Translation Format
  • Title

    The first word of your translation should be the title of the article as you have translated it. Only leave the title in French if it is commonly used in English or if there is no possible translation. Expand any abbreviations.

    In general, only the first word of a multi-word title should be capitalized. When word order is reversed (such as  “Legal medicine” for “Médecine légale”) capitalization is reversed. Please retain capitalization of proper nouns (names, places, institutions, etc.) in English, as in the original French. Note also that in article titles that take the form X or Y (e.g., “Lycanthrope or Werewolf”), both title words should be capitalized, as in the original.

    Omit the part of speech, gender, and all categories of knowledge. For example, “Père, s.m. (Droit naturel)” becomes “Father;” “Gens de Lettres, (Philosophie & Littérat.)” becomes “Men of letters.” Also omit articles in headwords when not used in contemporary English. For example, “Slaves, les” becomes simply “Slavs”, not “The Slavs” or “Slavs, The”.

    Categories of knowledge will appear in the headers of all translations, as we have translated and standardized them. However, when the French title is followed by a short explanatory phrase like “abstract term,” please translate it and leave it in.

    Some article titles are followed not simply by one or more categories of knowledge, but a complete hierarchy drawn from the tree of knowledge. In such a case, the entire genealogy should be retained in your translation, in italics and separated from the title with a comma, not within parentheses. See, e.g., Chemistry.

  • Paragraphing

    Please maintain original paragraphing but do not indent paragraphs. Please follow the original (and not ARTFL’s digitization) for quotations, which are sometimes set off and sometimes run into the text.

  • Italics

    Please retain all italics except for common Latin abbreviations such as etc. and ibid. Note that the title of the article will always be italicized when it appears within the body of the article.

  • Abbreviations and ampersands

    Abbreviations in the original should be spelled out in the translation, except for those that are commonly abbreviated in English. Examples:

    Translate the French "&" as "and".
    Translate the French "Ste." or "St." as "Saint".
    Translate the French "Fig." as "Figure".
    but translate the French "&c" as "etc.", not "et cetera."

  • Cross-references

    Write cross-references as See [Article title, Plate title and number]. That is, only the word "See" should be in italics, and the capitalization of the title should follow the form given above for titles.

    Please provide a hyperlink (inserted in MS-Word) to the cross-referenced article on our site. If the article has not yet been translated, please translate the title yourself. If it has been translated, use the translated title already online. The hyperlink should include all of the text of the cross-reference following the word "See."

    Note that because there are often multiple articles with the same title, it is important to identify which of these articles is being cross-referenced. Sometimes this is obvious because the category of knowledge is the same as that of the article you are translating, but sometimes it is less obvious, and sometimes you just have to use your judgment to guess which article is the best fit.

    Note that the original also contains some cross-references to articles that were never written or were published under a different title. If you do not find an article that exactly corresponds to a cross-reference, please do some detecting to see if there is one with a slightly different spelling, or a singular rather than plural, or even reverse order, such as Marchandes de Mode for Mode, marchands et marchandes de. Within the text of your translation, retain the cross-reference as given rather than “correcting” it to match the actual title of the article being referenced. If you are unable to find an article corresponding to a cross-reference, please insert a hyperlink to https://encyclopediaofdiderot.org/s/diderot/page/article-does-not-exist.

  • Book Titles

    Book titles should not be translated (you may provide a translation in square brackets following the original). Abbreviated book titles should be expanded. Notes may be used to provide bibliographic information and a hyperlink to the work cited either in the original or in English translation or both (see below). We recommend the following libraries, but any digital libraries that are freely accessible are acceptable. We prefer links to HathiTrust over Google Books when both are available.

    HathiTrust
    Gallica
    Wellcome Collection (Science and Medicine)

  • Quotations

    English translations should be provided for all quotations in languages other than English. For quotations from languages other than French, the original (Latin, for example) should be retained in the text, with the translation provided either in square brackets or in a note. Notes can also be used to provide a full bibliographical reference for a quotation (see below).

  • Text borrowed in whole or in part from other sources

    Translate the text as it is given. If it diverges from the original source (as is often the case) you can point this out in a note and explain any significant differences. You can also provide a link to the original source or a translation of it.

    Many articles are based in whole or in part on articles in Chambers, Cyclopaedia and occasionally on other sources originally in English. In such cases, please translate the French into modern English, as you would any other text you are translating, rather than substituting the original English. As with borrowings from other sources, you can provide a reference to the source in a note and a link to the original English text, as well as an explanation of any significant differences between the original English text and the Encycylopédie article.

  • Foreign or transliterated terms

    Please retain foreign or transliterated terms as they are used in the article and supply current English renderings in square brackets after the first instance, e.g. "Alcoran [Qur'an]"

    In instances when non-French names or people, places, or texts have been “Frenchified” in the original, please substitute English equivalents or the non-French or English original. For example, Latin authors “Tite-Live” and “Thucydide” should be “Livy” and “Thucydides.” The Roman goddess “Junon” should be “Juno.” The Dutch city “La Haye” should be “The Hague,” “Macédoine” should be “Macedonia,” and “Londres” should be “London.” “Tacite, Annales,” should be “Tacitus, Annals.”

  • Units of currency

    It is better not to translate the names of pre-Revolutionary units of currency; instead, leave the unit name in French. This includes even "livre," which is not really equivalent to a pound [sterling], then or now. If you feel it is appropriate, add a note on first use to explain that it is a unit of currency./p>

  • Units of measure

    Measurements found in articles use obsolete pre-Revolutionary units of measurements. If there is an appropriate English equivalent for the unit, use the English name in the translation; otherwise, leave the unit name in French. In either case, add a note on first use to explain the equivalent in contemporary units (both metric and US customary units). Wikipedia provides a useful table of Old Regime French Units of Measure.

  • Tables and equations

    Please recreate these using the Table function and the Equation Editor, both  under the Insert Tab in MS-Word.

  • Small diagrams and images

    If the article includes small diagrams or images (such as examples of typeface), create small images in JPEG format from ARTFL’s page images  and include these with your translation.

     

 
<Translator-Supplied Notes

Please use the footnote/endnote feature in MS-word, which will number notes continuously throughout the document. Do not follow Wikipedia style – that is, do not reuse note numbers and do not place multiple notes after a single piece of text. Whenever possible, place note numbers at the end of a sentence or a phrase, rather than after a word. If the article you are translating contains footnotes, make sure to distinguish your notes from the author's.

Notes can be used for a variety of purposes, including (but not limited to):

  • Clarifying a point in the text
  • Pointing out an error in the text
  • Providing basic information about a person or place referenced in the text (including a link to an article in Wikipedia or another reputable freely available source.
  • Providing a full citation or source for a quotation or reference in the text (see below)
  • Providing a translation of a quotation (not originally in French or English) (see below)
  • Explaining a choice made in translation or in modern terminology (see below)
  • Explaining the conversion of units of measure to contemporary units

Please do not use notes simply to give the original French for a phrase that you have translated except when commenting on a choice in translation.

If your note contains a bibliographic reference to a source freely available online, please insert a hyperlink to it. Please do not link to anything behind a paywall or that requires university affiliation for access.

Note that any interpolations directly in the text should be placed in square brackets and kept to a minimum. Hyperlinks should be inserted in the text of the translation ONLY for cross-references indicated in the original.

Notes cannot be added to header information.

 

 
<Instructions Specific to Translations of Plate Sets
  • Titles of sets of plates

    The titles of plates and sets of plates (found above them) and the caption for each plate (found below the image) have been translated already, but corrections to these initial translations are welcome.

  • Plate legends

    Please translate the legends (the annotated description of each numbered figure) in the order they are shown in the original. To help us overlay your translation into the images and captions already online, please indicate which images go where, either by copying the plate captions already online or otherwise indicating the placement of the images using square brackets.

    In the French original, the first legend is labeled "Fig. 1" and subsequent ones omit "Fig." but indent to show this. In the translation, write "Figure 1", "Figure 2", etc. at the beginning of each line.

 

 
<Resources for Translators

You may find the following resources helpful:

 
<Help

If you encounter a formatting issue that is not addressed by these guidelines, please contact us and together we can work out a solution and update them for future reference.

If you have a translation issue, we encourage you to consult your fellow volunteer translators at encyclopedie-translators AT umich DOT edu. This is, after all, a collaborative translation project, and we can and should help each other. As one of our volunteers, you are automatically enrolled in the list. Only enrolled volunteers can post to the list and the list is not shared with anyone. To unsubscribe please contact us at diderot-info AT umich DOT edu.

 

 
<Submitting Your Translation

Please email your finished translation as an attachment to ctp-submissions AT umich DOT edu. We will go over it and make any minor changes that are required for publication. If there are significant problems with the translation or its preparation we will contact you. If your translation is improperly formatted, lacks clarity, or is incorrect or incomplete, we reserve the right to return it for further work before publishing it on our site. In some cases, we may even reject it entirely. 

Note that the header of your translation will include your name, institutional affiliation, and (if you have given your permission) your email address. Please be sure to contact us at diderot-info AT umich DOT edu if this information changes so that we can update it.