Research on Terminological Variation in Petroleum Scientific and Technical Translation

Terminological variation is an inevitable phenomenon in petroleum scientific and technical translation. The phenomenon of terminological variation makes translation difficulties for translators. For some Sino-foreign joint venture oil and gas projects, the use of non-standard terms by translators will not only reduce the communication efficiency between Chinese and foreign personnel, but also threaten the safety of oil production due to misunderstanding. This paper collects and classifies the terms of an oil project, and the research result shows that the concept variation of terminology is the main reason for the formation of terminology variants in petroleum science and technology. Translators are not helpless in the face of these variants. Mastering the causes and differences of terminology, improving translators’ professional abilities, establishing memory databases and terminology databases, improving terminology retrieval capabilities, and combining with other countermeasures can improve the efficiency and accuracy of translation.