Not only do students of technical writing courses need to learn how to prepare documents for translation properly, but students of translation need to learn technical and academic writing. This article gives the example of such a course taught at the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary. The course covers writing instructions and manuals, documents for scholarly and professional societies and scientific conferences, scientific papers, reports, and abstracts.

In “Professional Documentation,” a class designed to make Hungarian students of English translation familiar with written genres, that are not translation, abstracting plays an important role. Students get theoretical background to abstracting in a lecture and by analyzing the appropriate chapters of technical writing textbooks. The structure and objectivity of the abstract, the features of its informative variant receive special attention. Practical student activities include analyzing and writing abstracts in different settings. Many of the methods applied can be used in the education of translators in other languages and in technical writing classes in other countries.