Over the past decade, Slovene authors of technical and academic texts on art history have often wanted to reach a wider audience among European and worldwide academic circles. To achieve that, the most suitable translation language is now English, even though there stands behind it a considerably different culture and art to that of Central Europe. From this fundamental difference there arise a number of challenges that are getting larger due to the lack of suitable tools, especially a Slovene-English dictionary, and the absence of a Slovene art-historical dictionary with foreign equivalents (now in preparation). On the basis of lengthy experience, I have come to the conclusion that the only acceptable way to arrive at a quality translation - especially in my highly specific field of the history of furniture - is via analysis of recently published contemporary English texts, in which can be found not only appropriate technical expressions, but also the established style of writing of foreign experts in the field. This way of working is very time-consuming and, until now, translators have not been willing to adhere to it, so I tackle the translations of my articles myself. The biggest question is whether it is possible to develop a Slovene variant of the excellent English technical language which could reflect, through the medium of the way of thinking and of structuring texts that has developed during the history of Slovene academic writing, Slovene culture. I shall illustrate my thinking withsome specific examples.
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