Overcoming the complexities of translating travel texts: Opportunities and challenges The case of Amadeus pricing and ticketing system’s manual

1. General lexical features of scientific/technical language
Scientific-technical texts are characterized as being specialized forms of writing exhibiting processes/materials in a manner as exact and clear as possible and free of any expressive or rhetoric elements. Technical/scientific language and style favor precision, conciseness, clarity, and literality, and can be distinguished from general language in vocabulary and the frequency of particular grammatical styles. Some common features of scientific-technical texts include:

• 
  Saturation with specific terms, neologisms and terminology units: This is achieved in English language words and expressions through the use of prefixes, suffixes, etc. Some examples are iso, ic, equi, aqua, etc. Moreover, the technical field distinguishes itself with the use of certain words which otherwise are expressed by other general diction, e.g., optimum versus maximum, homogenous versus similar, etc. A word like Conference has a very special meaning when used in the aviation field, .i.e., “movement”. Some basic rules of word formation used in the scientific/technical field include: “compounding, clipping, blending, back-formation, derivation; conversion, acronyms, combination, coinages”, Kosur (2012).
  
• 
  Presence of grammatical and lexical structures, such as:
  

1. 
   Noun compounds as technical terms for the advantage of farther mobile, shorter and compressed forms. For example: travel industry prospects, market shrinking rate, etc. In fact, the difficulty in understanding a compound word as a whole set leads to some difficulty in rendition.
   
2. 
   The passive: Adopting the passive form rather than the active reflects the interest of scientific/technical texts in expressing the action/process rather than its doer. (Alimkulov, 2011).
   

2. Main features of the language of travel manuals:
If considered as a distinguished technical type, language used in travel manuals is characterized by particular lexical, textual and functional features, including:

1. 
   Use of travel- related proper names, terms, acronyms and abbreviations, e.g., IATA (International Air Transport Association) , UFTAA (United Federation of Travel Agents' Associations) , (High Intermediate point ‘HIP’, SITO ‘Sold Inside Ticketed Outside’, MPM ‘Maximum Permitted Miles’ to mention but a few.
   
2. 
   Frequency of imperatives: This stems from the directive function of texts, e.g., display fare notes categories by two-letter code, enter fare basis code, access Amadeus Hotel Points of Reference;
   
3. 
   The use of the present simple tense in order to reflect the informational function of travel operations, rules, or guidelines and describe their frequent and repetitive nature (e.g., you can combine several options in one transaction, at time of ticketing, the System uses the amount shown in the Total box in the stored fare to submit to the Sales Report),and so forth.
   
4. 
   The expressive function is conveyed not only by careful use of lexical techniques, but also by using tables, graphs, schemas, symbols, which are essential for explanatory and demonstrative purposes.