So the book. But with books, as well as with people, there are problems. And the problems are, in fact, the same: accuracy, correctness, completeness, quality of presentation of the material. But by the listed parameters, the similarity of books with people is not limited to. On their example, the sad fate of civilization seems obvious. Everything is getting worse. This bitter cataclysm is seen everywhere in the smallest details of life. The girls are getting old, the sky is fading, the young people do not listen to their elders and only want to dance, drink wine and write on Habr. And all, which is typical, have legs! “So, sonny. Can you imagine the bugs are all the same! " Well, that is, the books. In the last decade, an unpleasant tendency has finally taken shape in modern technical book publishing. Bookstore shelves are crammed with user manuals and outdated reference books,There are practically no interesting books on complex technical areas and, in particular, on electronics in Russian, and those that are printed are translated very badly. It is impossible to read without tears and bitter regret about the mediocre money spent. And Habr too often offers the same low-quality rubbish under the guise of transfers, but at least it does not ask for money.
But maybe there are fewer books because there is no longer a need for them? Well, everyone there learned English and reads Noam Chomsky in the original? Also no. Those who know English are not interested in electronics, those who are engaged in electronics do not know the language (*). Well, how does he not know? He can figure out the reference data on the crystal, with which he has to work, since there are a lot of pictures, but he will not sit down for a serious book without extreme need.
(*) Chomsky is not about electronics, but you get the idea.
In my opinion, this sad result (intermediate, because the funeral is not tomorrow?) Is a natural consequence of the development of automatic translation tools to such a state that makes work without using them unprofitable for the publisher: too difficult, too slow and too expensive. <personal experience> I found out that a certain company is going to translate a voluminous technical book of over 500 pages. And how much time and money do you think they give for such work? Four months and less than 100 thousand rubles. One hundred pages a month is personally weak for me: for the main place of work, they offer little, but for a part-time job they want a lot. True, the term "page" is used incorrectly here. It would be more correct to talk about the number of characters, because the content of the page strongly depends on the nature of the layout. But we are not talking about that now. </ personal experience> In the output of modern books, they stopped writing the name of the translator, and even the old-timers will not mention the phrase "under the technical editing of such and such"
It should be noted that technical writers are rarely masters of words, and after the life-giving influence of a computer, it becomes absolutely impossible to perceive their works without disgust. It is important to understand here that “machine translation” does not mean that the work is fed to a program that generates a finished text at the output and sends it to the publisher itself. Modern CAT systemsmore like an interactive dictionary, which you replenish with ready-made phrases, phrases and sentences. The longer the work, the more likely it is that the new sentence is already in memory, and the more confident it can be argued that it will be translated in exactly the same way as the previous one. But what's good for letter recognition isn't necessarily good for meaningful text. Of the same words, the same phrases are composed, resulting in a gray and boring boringness. And if the source code was already utterly boring? And how can it be different with a volume of 500 pages with a hook? There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare and in most cases well known.
Here it is necessary to emphasize the second tendency of modern book publishing. The books are getting thicker. This is especially clearly seen in several successive editions of a popular work. From time to time it adds a hundred or two pages, and in three or four editions it turns from a readable book of three hundred pages into a completely overwhelming thousand-page brick, the prospect of acquaintance with which is confusing. In my opinion, the maximum size of a technical book is 250 ... 350 pages, and there must be very good reasons for exceeding this value.
In addition, it would be nice for the translator to understand the topic so as not to miss outright crap or to clarify an unobvious place for the reader. Philological education alone is clearly not enough here.
The third problem with modern paper books. The quality of the paper layout is gradually, inevitably and irreversibly deteriorating, which is already very noticeable in modern English-language publications. Plus, the quality of freshly printed books as products decreases: bad glue, cheap bindings, falling out pages. Some ten years ago it would have been ridiculous to think about this. The ease of entering the process (in comparison with the previous pre-computer technologies) and an increasing proportion of books in electronic formats (especially html-like, i.e. without pagination) lead to a gradual departure from the classical rules of book layout. It is expensive, specialists are in short supply, and it will be appreciated by a couple of quarrelsome pensioners who will not buy anything anyway. An ordinary person will not notice a high-quality layout, nor will he notice the work of a good admin, a working mechanism, etc.Only bad work is visible, when it does not go well, does not buzz, does not climb and blood flows from the eyes.
So what's our plan? He complained about life, discussed translators ... discussed, branded publishing houses. It's time to rip off the covers from, I'm not afraid, informationally significant, i.e. meaningful content or content.
Content! How much of this word has merged for our ear. So it all started with a patient and competent mentor. Let's move on to "literacy". How can you measure the quality of your content? For the layman, there is only one way - recommendation. This can be the advice of an authoritative person or the principle of "veche", when a decision is made according to the loudness of the hubbub of supporters of one or another source. There may be a hitch with an “authoritative person”. Quote:
– , () , . , , «» , . . «»( www.warandpeace.ru/ru/reports/view/152266 ). An example is the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.T. Fomenko (mathematician-topologist) and his alternative dating of history (“the routine of consciousness” does not allow him to assess the degree of his incompetence in history). There remains only "veche". Not a bad option, actually. If there are a lot of supporters of some garbage, then, even doing garbage, you will be part of the "mainstream". Here, however, it can come out as with a modern book layout: it is, of course, mainstream, but, after all, it is also awkward!
It is incorrect to reduce the problem of choice solely to rational considerations. Often, some kind of red and yellow design and fresh marketing ploy, like the words "uncensored" or "bestseller", scattered in the most prominent places, can affect the purchase decision in the most unobvious way. They will look especially advantageous on the cover of a work by some Heinrich Böll or Lermontov, but they will also decorate Kernighan and Richie at the very least.
Let’s already recommend to the young people who are thinking about everything that their hands have reached, some good book on electronics. The best textbook so far, just like 30 years ago, is The Art of Circuitry, by Horowitz and Hill. (For those citizens who do not agree with this statement, I recommend rereading the passage about their "everyday consciousness" two paragraphs above and be ashamed while no one sees). You may not be aware, but in 2015 the third (as the authors claim, the last) edition of this work came out. On the Internet, you can find a corrected version from 2017. For those who have not read it, I would like to inform you that the book has been completely revised. Part of the material has been removed, part has been added. The tutorial explains the basic concepts and principles of building circuits at a very good level, contains a lot of working examples.All the material in the book is strictly about electronics. There are no programs and digital methods, and microcontrollers are mentioned exclusively in the context of using their peripherals. Hardcore only: bare metal and ways to approach the projectile. The two previous editions (1983 and 1989, there are translations of the Soviet publishing house Mir) are quite outdated in terms of schematic examples, since many elements are simply discontinued. The new edition builds on this experience, and current schematics are more conceptualized and less dependent on specific components. The text provides detailed descriptions of the decisions made and the rationale for the choice made. The classification and reference part of the material has been seriously expanded. For example, more than 40 pages are devoted to the description of difference, differential and instrumental amplifiers and their differences from each other.Detailed descriptions of circuit solutions from industry leaders such as Agilent voltmeters are available. The total volume increased to 1100+ pages (yes, this is the very exception). In ASCII code this is 4.5M. Four and a half megabytes of very good (easy, beautiful, understandable and engaging) written text. In perfect English. In short, you understand: everything is bad, there is a conspiracy all around, and there is no hope. But, look, someone is already in a hurry to help you! This is me, hello. My translation is good, and I'm not a bad person myself. Everything is free, that is, for free. So read on, dear comrades, educate yourself, remember me with a kind word. The site is not commercial, you know where to send complaints. You won't be able to read the entire book yet - only 3.8M are available. The translation was carried out strictly by pen on paper without these devilish computer gizmos of yours that steal the soul from books (well, you know).The terminology was consulted with the domestic literature on the topic. In short, you can check out the results of three years of work. the-epic-file.com/bookshelf.htm . The site is static, it does not contain any trackers or other dirty tricks (except for Selectel funds, on whose resources it is located). The only script at the moment is MathJax.
And by the way, you can add links to html tables on the internet that you personally like . I know, "taste", but examples are needed and, preferably, different, because so far there are no tables in translation. In the original, they are large and rich, and they need to be somehow conveniently reflected on the screen, but I still have no ideas.
PS By the way, despite the many thanks from the authors to the "workers of the paragraph and indentation", this same English original is an excellent example of the degradation of book layout as a field of professional activity. All tendencies are evident, although they are not very eyesore.