Terminological variability as an indicator of organizational deficit in the translation process in international projects (a case study of nuclear energy)

<jats:p>The aim of the study is to demonstrate that terminological variability in translated operational documentation of an international nuclear project serves as an indicator of organizational deficit in the translation process rather than a set of isolated individual translators’ errors. The study is based on a comprehensive comparative analysis of a corpus of 18 documents (9 Russian-to-English translation pairs) of operational documentation of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1 (Iran), produced within a Rosatom project. The 15 identified cases of variability are classified into four types: terminological (discrepancies in rendering technical terms), compositional (inconsistencies in standard section headings), pragmatic (inconsistent rendering of modal constructions), and institutional (variability in names of organizations and positions). The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that, for the first time, translation variability is examined on the material of authentic nuclear industry project documentation as a diagnostic feature of the organization of the translation process rather than as a purely linguistic phenomenon. As a result, it has been established that the root cause of variability is a systemic organizational deficit – the absence of a unified approved project glossary, a style guide, a terminological verification procedure, and coordination among translators; the findings are compared with data on terminological synonymy between IAEA and Rostechnadzor documentation; organizational recommendations for preventing terminological variability in international nuclear energy projects are formulated.</jats:p>