TITLE: Reading Papers in a Language you don't Speak
QUESTION [14 upvotes]: First, I apologize if I'm posting this to the wrong place, but it seems correct.
My adviser sent me the SGA text of Grothendieck which is in French. Though I can piece together parts of the text, I'm afraid that I'm losing significant parts of the meaning when I just have no idea what a sentence says. Google Translate was not terribly helpful. I was wondering what the standard techniques are for dealing with papers in a foreign language.

REPLY [3 votes]: You can try to seek assistance in a translation site such as http://www.proz.com.
This is a global site connecting clients and translators from around the world. Although there are few professional translators who understand advanced mathematics, such creatures may exist if you seek translation from a common language like French.
You can register at the site and offer the job with all your conditions. Then you select the translator who suits you most. 
I would not expect a high-quality result, but you can help the translator by providing her/him with the terminology of the subject field.
The down side is that it can cost you several hundred $, depending on the length of the paper.