trimming a specialist article while translating

The kind of work that I am perverse enough to enjoy: paring down a scholarly article to the desired length while translating it into English. Translating academic texts is an exciting balancing act between style and technical vocabulary anyway (German academic articles in particular tend to be full of technical terms, and I try, if I may, to make these publications somewhat more reader-friendly in English translation). And now the other problem: many scholarly journals only publish articles with a maximum of, say, 10,000 words or 50,000 characters – and a text tends to become longer rather than shorter in translation. But, tadaaa, I’ve managed to shorten a scholarly publication to the desired length without losing any content: and the journal has accepted it!

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