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Over the last few years I have translated into English a fair amount of scientific papers for a Mexican scientist. Throughout this time, I noticed that by far the most common style requirement was asking the paper to be written in either American or British English. I have no problem with American since in Mexico we usually learn the American dialect, but writing a paper in British is a whole different story.

Throughout this time, I've looked up online as many guides on how to migrate a document from American to British English, but the most I've been able to find was this short guide on American vs. British spelling as well as a few vocabulary guides (e.g. "French fries", "truck" and "drugstore" vs. "chips", "lorry" and "chemist"). Entering queries on Google like "how to translate from American to British English" yields almost no meaningful results.

If anyone has some pointers on how to translate a scientific paper from American to British English, I would be extremely thankful.

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    Welcome to EL&U. As a reminder, Stack Exchange questions should be posed to seek a single authoritative answer; requests for open-ended lists of suggestions, tips, recommendations, pointers, and so on are very ill-suited to the format. Translation is probably not the term you want, and may explain your difficulty finding resources. Just search on differences between British and American English and you will find scads of articles, websites, papers, and other guides.
    – choster
    Commented Dec 13, 2018 at 18:50
  • I've already googled them before, but the sheer bulk of these differences make it way too cumbersome to migrate a document from American to British using one of these guides. This is a problem, because scientific papers are subject to deadlines, so a simple and concise guide is necessary. Preferrably, a guide saying "change -or to -our except for these words, change these American words to these British words".
    – RAKK
    Commented Dec 13, 2018 at 19:40
  • The goal is to have paper reviewers read the document and declare it conforms to their style specifications.
    – RAKK
    Commented Dec 13, 2018 at 19:40
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    Things are just not that simple. Not every program becomes a programme. Some fillet is fillet but some is filet. An American ton is lighter than an Imperial ton. But the point remains that open-ended requests for help are not good Stack Exchange questions, and further that requests for resources, if you are asking for a particular guide or manual, are not on-topic here (although you can post them on the Meta site).
    – choster
    Commented Dec 13, 2018 at 19:56
  • Add also the BrE spelling for defence, aluminium, centre, sulphur (to name just a few), and the marvellous rule for double L. I think the only solution is to become transatlantically bilingual :-)
    – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten
    Commented Dec 13, 2018 at 22:13

4 Answers 4

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Most of the differences in technical writing are spellings. Wikipedia has an article with plenty of examples. Common ones are endings: -re instead of -er, -our instead of -or and -ise instead of -ize (though the latter is accepted by some authorities in British English. There are plenty of others. Whole words include sulphur and aluminium in some contexts - in others the spellings chosen by IUPAC (chemistry) are used whatever flavour of English is used. -ae- and -oe- are much more common in British English, a simple -e- is used in American (many words in a medical context, for example)

The other differences tend to be:

  • more idiomatic and therefore less suitable for technical writing than alternative phrasing.
  • widely understood, to the point that whether they're Americanisms or not is a matter for debate.
  • variable between style guides anyway.

A few specific cases are worth mentioning (addressed from the point of view of academic British English):

  • gotten isn't a word.
  • spelt is the past tense of spell and not just a form of wheat (spelled is also acceptable).
  • British English is more likely to double a final consonant when adding a suffix.
  • we fly in aeroplanes not airplanes.
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Switch your spellchecker in MSWord to 'English (United Kingdom)' and it will catch all but the words that can be spelled correctly either way in English - there are a few 'ise' / 'ize' ending words like that. There really aren't that many words that are different if you're translating a scientific paper.

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  • Does Google Drive also have that option? My lifestyle requires that I use cloud tools to translate papers so I hardly use MS Word for that.
    – RAKK
    Commented Dec 13, 2018 at 18:00
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    @RAKK Try this: File > Language > English (United Kingdom).
    – Laurel ♦
    Commented Dec 14, 2018 at 6:05
  • There are whole loads of changes that your spellchecker are not going to catch.
    – DJClayworth
    Commented Apr 29 at 13:36
  • There are a few words a spellchecker won't get, e.g. US "tire"/UK "tyre" (rubber thing round wheels)" will confuse with the verb "to tire". Similarly car parts like "hood/bonnet" which are valid words with other meanings, and culinary terms like "biscuit". But a lot will be caught. And in many academic disciplines you don't discuss car parts or food, which seem to be the main areas of difference (along with slang e.g. "fanny", "pissed", which also shouldn't be included).
    – Stuart F
    Commented Apr 29 at 14:21
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Don't do it.

You wouldn't try to translate a paper into a language you aren't really familiar with, would you? Not even if you had Google translate for that language. Well, it seems you are not really familiar with British English, so don't try to translate into it. Sure, you can make a stab at fixing up the spellings with a spell-checker, but you aren't going to catch everything, and then it will make you look like you don't know your job.

Your best bet is to find someone who is familiar with British English. Do your translation into either US English or your best guess at British English and have your colleague check the translation over.

Also, most British people can read American, so if it isn't absolutely necessary to translate to British, don't do it.

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  • This would be the right answer if the text in question were of a different kind. The many subtle differences between American and British English are, however, unlikely to play a role in an article in one of the natural sciences or engineering or a similar field.
    – jsw29
    Commented Apr 29 at 15:44
  • It is not easy to find people familiar with British English in Mexico. The regional hegemony of the United States leads to almost everyone learning the American dialect; pretty much the only ones who know British are the few ones who have traveled to Europe or the UK.
    – RAKK
    Commented May 27 at 23:03
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If it's a scientific paper, the scientists reading it should be able to understand both national varieties of English. Besides, some of the spellings and lexicon found primarily in one of the two varieties of English are just as acceptable in both. For example, although most words that end in 'ize' or 'yze' in American English have 'ise' and 'yse' endings in standard British English, the North American variants are fairly common in Britain as well. Same with words like "aluminum\aluminium" and "airplane\aeroplane", while British English favors "aluminium" and "aeroplane", the American variants "aluminum" and "airplane" are just as valid in Britain.

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    This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review
    – livresque
    Commented Apr 28 at 6:44
  • Moreover, this doesn't add anything to what has already been posted on this page. While new answers to old questions are welcome on this site, they are expected to be genuinely new. The answers that merely repeat what is in the other answers are frowned upon, as they clutter the page and so make it less useful to future visitors.
    – jsw29
    Commented Apr 28 at 15:26
  • Both the -ise and the -ize spelling camps have many followers in the UK; Oxford University and Oxford University Press differ in the recommendations they make. // At one time, O-Level candidates would lose a mark for spelling sulphur 'sulphur' in chemistry exams; I'm not sure if they would have been penalised for using the 'sulfur' variant in English exams. //// As has been discussed before, 'standard British English' is not rigorously defined, so fails as a classification.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 29 at 15:00
  • This isn't a matter of whether the scientists will understand it, it's a matter of the language style mandated by the editors. If you submit a paper written in American to an editor that requires British, chances are it will be rejected.
    – RAKK
    Commented May 27 at 23:02

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