Prosze o pomoc!!!

Mam pytanie: jak przetłumaczyć na język angielski tytuł : inżynier ochrony środowiska, ewentualnie inżynieria środowiska...? Z góry dziekuje za pomoc... Pozdrawiam...

Environmental Protection Engineer - here ya got the title you asked for

Wielkie dzięki!!! Nie myślałem że to takie proste... :)

teeny, tiny problem! 'engineer' in english is a profession, whereas in polish it can refer to a degree! so look out! you can also say that you have 'a degree in environment protection', or 'a bs(bachelor of sciences) in environment protection'. 'engineer' is also the guy who drives a train (engine=lokomotywa), so be really careful with this word!

Good point!
If you (the original asker) need it for a business card or a CV, I'd go for "M.Sc.Eng. in Environmental Protection"

Haste makes waste
M.Sc.Eng. is "magister inżynier"
Inżynier alone would be "M.Eng.", probably

sure! although never seen 'eng.' on a business card! i'd think it stands for english!

what i would do is i'd leave out the word 'eng.' or 'engineer'. trust me, all it can breed is confusion! 'degree' or 'b.s.' will do the trick!

B.Sc. for inżynier is OK provided it actually does take about 3 years to get an inżynier degree (i.e. as long as studying for a licencjat degree in other fields). It may be so under the current system, but I can vaguely remember that "inżynier" used to involve 4-5 years of study at a Politechnika and taking a final examination, whereas the next step - becoming a "magister inżynier" - meant you had to write a regular master's thesis. So I still have my doubts.
NB. the title of "Master of Engineering" (abbreviated MEng or even ME) is offered by quite a few American universities.

Cheers!

'magister inzynier' is a totally polish degree with no good equivalent in english. 'master of engineering' refers to computers, IT, computer science, call it what you will!

what you can get though at a number of us schools is a 'b.s. in ________ engineering'. e.g 'a b.s. in electical engineering'. but that's sth yet different.

You said it did not exist and I wanted to prove otherwise.

besides, what do you exactly mean by these numbers? how many years it takes to get a degree?

i believe i never used the expression 'doesn't exist'. i said 'it can cause confusion'. and 'i've never seen', which still proves it wouldn't be clear in this context. that's all.

My theory about 'those numbers' is that if an "inżynier" degree takes considerably longer to complete than a B.Sc. ('licencjat'), and the procedure that a licencjat holder has to go through in order to become a magister is different than in the case of inzyner -> magister inzynier transition, then the two titles cannot be equated. That was a point I wasn't sure about, but I have found this site: http://www.buwiwm.edu.pl/educ/index.htm and now I think that you can translate inzynier as B.Sc. under the current system.
As you said, "magister inzynier " is a 'totally Polish' degree and a lot depends on whether it is necessary to preserve this 'local colour' in translation. If not, "B.Sc." is fine.

we probably shouldn't mix two totally different systems of education. it usu. takes 4 yrs to get a b.s. (in us) and in many cases this degree has nothing in common with polish 'licencjat' and 'inzynier'. this translation is just a shortcut, but one which is absolutely necessary here.

the bottom line here is that the word 'engineer' simply can't be used to refer to the polish degree 'inzynier'. that's all.
i just see no reason to compare the programs in which you can get 'licencjat' and 'inzynier'. it it won't work in english!

really, i'm far from being nitpicky, but haven't you even thought that the translators who try to render the 'local color' in their translations, simply complicate things a great deal?

the bottom line here is that the word 'engineer' simply can't be used to refer to the polish degree 'inzynier'. that's all.

Let me repeat myself: "Good point"

>really, i'm far from being nitpicky, but haven't you even thought
>that the translators who try to render the 'local color' in their
>translations, simply complicate things a great deal?

This is a sweeping statement, and my answer is "No".
Here's an example of another aspect of the Polish system of education. Try to translate it without rendering the local colour:
W Instytucie pracuje 2 doktorów habilitowanych i 5 doktorów.

There are contexts where you can replace both doktor and doktor habilitowany with "Ph.D.", but in the sentence above you are supposed to distinguish between these two degrees in the translation and you know that there is no good equivalent for the higher degree in the English-speaking academic world.

that's a really good example! and it's a very broad subject - how to translate something that's absent in the target language.
however, i do believe it proves my point (what i meant about making things more complicated), as no matter what you do herein terms of translation, it will still be insufficient. the best (only) ways out of it are to: a) provide an explanation or b) omit 'habilitowany' in english (running the risk of being sued by the oversensitive academic :)). and so, again, the 'local color' would complicate the hell out of things here! unless you have another suggestion.

another example. how to translate a name tag prof. jan xxx. thinker, hum?

> b) omit 'habilitowany' in
>english (running the risk of being sued by the oversensitive academic
>:)).

good point:)))

I was in such a situation once. I said it can't be translated 'like that', and I heard 'it must be translated 'like that', otherwise there'll be a VERY big quarrel about the titles or actually lack of the titles'. So.......

yeah. i know what you mean. when i have to choose btwn clarity and accuracy, i usu. go for clarity. this is the moment where many people get judgemental! the way i see it is: it's obvious in pol, absent from eng, i skip it (if it is interpreting, i make a small digression explaining what it's all about, if it's a written text, i footnote it)!

my motto is: do not make things more complicated that they actually are!

so... what did you do ???

Actually, there was nothing I could do. I was told that ALL titles must be there, so.... there they were:)))
I only could express my opinion saying why I think it was wrong. The lady responsible for that said it's better to write it a bit 'incorrectly' than listen to all the grievances afterwards.

that's a lousy situation! obviously you had to go with your job, i just wonder how you got out of it. but probab you wanna keep it to yrslf. anyway, i'm also curious what all those big shot professors at english departments across poland do with their phds. i mean how they translate them into english. after all, they have a lot of sentiment for their degrees and titles, don't they?

So you're saying that the title should not be translated differently than doktor just because an equivalent degree does not exist in English? Go on then, imagine it's 1976 or something. You would render both B.A and M.A. as magister, wouldn't you, because - in 1976 - we did not have a two-tier university system?
You say "I go for clarity rather than accuracy" and you're missing out on an aspect of translation that IS important in certain contexts. I agree that there are no universal laws of translation, but it seems that you are faced with different contexts in your practice than I - and you are too keen to apply your techniques to all contexts, thus thinking they are universal.
Amused, I don't think you were right when yopu said "it can't be translated like that". How would you render a hamburger? Bułka z dodatkami? The fact that "hamburger" exists in Polish actually demonstrates a 100%-accuracy approach to translation. The problem is that "doktor habilitowany" is not so widely known as the hamburger (so you may think that nobody will care if you simplify the text) and - most importantly - that you are translating from a minor language into one spoken all over the world. Still, think of why someone would read a text about a university department in Poland. Someone who is interested in doing so needs accurate information. This is in contrast to, say, "mój znajomy jest doktorem habilitowanym" appearing in a short story, where it can easily be rendered as "a Ph.D." or even "a university professor".
That's my take on it all. No offence was meant, but I feel I need to set things right the way I see it. As we say on pl.hum.tlumaczenia: context rulez :-)

M.Sc., environmental science
B.A., environmental science

Or lose the comma and make it M.Sc. or B.A. in environmental science
No engineer nonsense.

i wholeheartedly agree with you, but again you jump into conclusions.
first of all, i never said i do not translate things like 'habilitowany', i said i skip them in the main text, just footnoting them (you can say 'special phd, whatever, it means the same to an english native speaker as 'habilitowany'). so read carefully!

secondly, i never said my way is best, i just gave some agruments to support the theory that confusion is the worst thing in ant translation! i refered to a specific context!

thirdly, i do strongly believe that clarity comes before accuracy in most cases. there will always be a small difference in the knowledge you can get from reading the same text in 2 different languages. it happens so because the translator focused on 1, maybe 2, ok maybe 80 aspects of the text, but not ALL of them. that's an impossibility! there is not 1 sentence which can be rendered in another language with 100% accuracy for a variety of reasons! that;s also why the same sentence can be usu. translated in a zillion different ways and the translator picks out the one way which they see as the best solution.

this is pretty much in compliance with the theory that any translation is to a large extent internretation and as such simply cannot be 100% accurate.
that;s the beauty of it.

btw, god we've gotten theoretical! but i guess that's the beauty of this job. you start with one stupid word (engineer) and there it goes... you end up discussing the phiosophy of translation!

p.s. nice talkin' to ya mg!

one more thing, context IS the thing that makes a translation! that's my other motto!