Remarks/Comments inside a translation

Question

I'm currently writing up my Masters Dissertation and in one of my sections I have translated an article that was written in German. To the best of my knowledge no current translation of this specific article exists.

My question is this; what is the best way to add commentary/remarks to what has been translated without disrupting the flow of the translation?

For example

foo bar foo bar foo bar and is given by
<insert equation here>
where ......

I'd like to add a comment along the lines of

foo bar foo bar foo bar and is given by
<insert equation here>
{comment on how he managed to derive said equation because it's not obvious}
where ......

Initially I thought that perhaps it's better to comment on them in the footnote as suggested here. However, it means some footnotes are going to be half a page and ruin the flow of the translation.

Any ideas or feedback is greatly appreciated

Regards

Kendall

Answer 1

Actually, inline comments will ruin the flow of the translation more than footnotes, I think. Especially if you have long comments that will run over page boundaries.

Footnoting will make it clearer what is the translation and what are the comments. It is also easier to ignore the comments if the reader chooses.

But if they are inline, perhaps using a distinctive font for the comments might help a bit.