Carl Peterson wrote:
I don't really know what articles you all typically work on, but I've been concentrating on Mathematics articles, which I've noticed have fewer problems than a usual translation. Fortunately, the Pythagorean Theorem, which I'm working on right now, is available as an FA in two languages (de and fr), one of which I know well enough to make a translation, especially since a lot of the mathematics terms are spelling variations on the English (or vice versa, depending on how one chooses to look at it).
Technical subjects tend to be easier to translate because language there tends to be more precisely defined.
Humanities based subjects depend a lot more on subtle variations and connotations of language, and are more likely to generate false friends. In a controversial subject where people have had long arguments about the right word the situation won't get any easier for translators into a language where the median POV will be different from that found in the source language.
Ec