The Scientific Revolution and Its Repercussions on the Translation of Technical Discourse
Abstract
The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century not only revolutionized the English world view, it also brought about profound changes on the level of discourse. Through a process of grammatical metaphorization (Halliday and Martin 1993), primary experience was linguistically recons trued to create a picture of a static objective universe from which all subjectivity was effectively removed. The Catholic cultures of Continental Europe were initially resistant to the scientific worldview, remaining loyal for political and religious reasons to the earlier humanistic model (Bennett 2007a, 2007b). Nevertheless, by the late 20th century, with the pressures of globalization, most had developed a scientific discourse of their own, essentially calqued from the English model. The fact that this discourse was borrowed however, rather than resulting from an internal process of evolution, has led to certain grammatical and rhetorical inconsistencies, which raise problems for translation. This paper discusses some of the technical issues besetting the English translator of Portuguese scientific texts, including difficulties related to nominalizations, impersonal verb structures and the intrusion of features from the traditional discourse. It also considers ethical and epistemological questions resulting from the process of linguistic colonization (Phillipson 1992, Pennycook 1994).
... It is, in fact, style and rhetoric that are at the heart of the debate. In her exploration of the development of the dominant Anglo-American model of academic writing, Bennett (2011) underlines the links between the Scientific Revolution of the 17 th century, Enlightenment values and the emergence of logical argumentation, pointing out that the Catholic cultures of Continental Europe long resisted this paradigm "for identity and political reasons" (Bennett 2011, 192), cultivating a less explicit writing style. ...
... Within the field of applied linguistics, the role of language mediators has been addressed above all from the perspective of language editing/copyediting (Harwood et al. 2009;Mauranen 1997), while translation, as a related form of language meditation, remains less explored. On the other hand, there is an increasing interest in the area of translation of academic discourse (sometimes narrowed down to "scientific translation") in the field of translation studies, most notably in the work of Montgomerry (2000Montgomerry ( , 2009, Olohan (2015) and Bennett (2007Bennett ( , 2011. In addition, the number of empirical studies focusing on the characteristics of translated academic texts in the field is growing (Paradiž, this volume;Pfau 2015;Pisanski Peterlin 2008Williams 2007). ...
Interest in academic discourse has been growing in Slovenia, as well as in the wider region, and shared research paradigms that take into consideration cross-cultural encounters in academic contexts are emerging. It therefore seems important to create opportunities for interaction among scholars juxtaposing different lingua-cultures. With this edited volume, we wished to provide such an opportunity by bringing together researchers examining different language combinations, including those contrasting English as an academic lingua franca and L1 discourse, as well as experts investigating other languages and cultures. A central and recurring theme of the volume is the focus on the dynamic evolution of academic discourse conventions through language contact predominantly in Slovene, but also, in the context of the region, in Croatian and Serbian.
The papers collected in this volume bring together different methodological approaches, demonstrating how by synergizing their strengths, we gain new insights into the changing conventions of academic writing. Moreover, highlighting a range of cultural traditions allows us to reimagine the role of academic writing in the peripheral languages. We therefore hope that this volume can be used as a step towards future collaborations among scholars whose work focuses on cross-cultural encounters in academic contexts involving central, semi-peripheral and peripheral languages.
... 101-114). This rhetorical contrast raises a number of problems for the translation of academic texts from Portuguese into English (Bennett, 2011). ...
The recent rise in the number of English-medium journals in non-Anglophone countries stems from the hegemony of English in global scholarly communication, and language requirements outlined by such journals to authors offer a valuable yet often overlooked source of information in terms of underlying values and assumptions concerning knowledge production and circulation. Drawing on the notion of “semiperiphery” to refer to Brazil’s current standing within global scientific publishing, this exploratory study focuses on author guidelines of Brazilian English-medium journals indexed in the SciELO database to map language requirements established for manuscript submission and to assess, from a discursive perspective, whether they reinforce or disprove dominant ideologies regarding academic publishing, knowledge construction and dissemination, and the status of English as the academic lingua franca. The research data included 98 journal guidelines sections from seven subject areas, and results suggest that journals across the disciplinary spectrum endorse the primacy of (native speaker) English in knowledge dissemination, which calls for a critique of scientific monolingualism on the part of research policymakers, in Brazil and elsewhere
... It is, in fact, style and rhetoric that are at the heart of the debate. In her exploration of the development of the dominant Anglo-American model of academic writing, Bennett (2011) underlines the links between the Scientific Revolution of the 17 th century, Enlightenment values and the emergence of logical argumentation, pointing out that the Catholic cultures of Continental Europe long resisted this paradigm "for identity and political reasons" (Bennett 2011, 192), cultivating a less explicit writing style. ...
Introduction to the volume Academic writing from cross-cultural perspectives: Exploring the synergies and interactions.
Key points
Publish in English or perish is becoming a reality in many non‐Anglophone countries.
Non‐Anglophone journals are facing a dilemma: losing appeal to authors/reviewers if published in local languages or losing linguistic/cultural identity if published in English.
This article analyses language policies those journals may use and positions them on a capital‐identity matrix to highlight their advantages and disadvantages.
The article elaborates on two emerging language policies (bilingual publishing and extended English summary), both helping preserve their identity and take advantage of the capital of the English language.
The article provides insights into the pros and cons of different language policies and how to select policies that best support journal survival and development.
Local (peripheral) social sciences and humanities journals are underrepresented in major indexes due to linguistic, ideological, and disciplinary bias. To seek international visibility without sacrificing their local identity, they are adopting translation-mediated bilingual publishing to construct a new identity. Since bilingual publishing is a new trend, what identity is being constructed is rarely investigated. This article aims to explore the linguistic, content, and communicated identity of those journals. Content analysis was used to review the language policies (websites, article abstracts, and full articles), the composition of editorial teams, pools of contributors, instructions to authors, journal overviews, and website logos or journal covers of sixty-eight peripheral social sciences and humanities journals. The results indicate that the majority are attempting to construct a glocal identity, a hybrid identity to maintain their unique status as a local journal and simultaneously strive for better recognition in the international community. Another finding is that the journals are divided in terms of communicated identity, causing obstacles to the successful construction of a new identity. This study provides evidence on the construction of a glocal identity by bilingually published peripheral journals and has implications for the strategic use of linguistic and non-linguistic resources in identity construction.
This paper analyzes the strategies adopted in the English translation of the Arabic novel Captives of Superstition State (2019) from a Cultural perspective. In translating literary works, especially between Arabic and English which belong to two distant cultures, cultural loss seems to be inevitable. Salih’s translation focuses on the transfer of the verbal message of the source text and is mostly concerned with its target reader. In terms of culture, Salih’s translation employs many strategies to provide the same equivalent in the receiving culture to maintain the original cultural identity preserved in the source text.
Chapter 17 highlights how translation studies’ interaction with genre analysis, register studies, critical language study, contrastive rhetoric and the study of languages for special/academic purposes relates to the translation of academic texts. Most investigations contrast English with languages such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Slovene, Hungarian, Finnish and Danish, and the foci of analyses relate to a wide range of topics, such as translation strategies, style and register, terminology, and culture-specific discourse conventions. The chapter identifies the challenges that the field faces and the areas where further research is needed.
This chapter focuses on the most relevant conceptual issues in specialised translation by using process- and product-oriented theoretical models which are mostly the result of actual translation practice and, more generally, of experimental approaches and models based on professional experience. The theoretical aspects of translation being discussed are the notions of translation ‘equivalence’ and ‘translation problems’, with problems being divided into ‘pragmatic and cultural’, on the one hand, and ‘linguistic and text-specific’, on the other. The chapter also illustrates the relevance to specialised translation of the theoretical paradigm of descriptivism with the related notions of translation ‘norms’ and translation ‘universals’, and addresses ethical issues related to the responsibility of specialised translators.
This chapter illustrates the preparatory phase of the translation task, where the translator pre-reads the source text to identify translation problems in light of the specific conditions in which the translation activity takes place. Based on the two main parameters of ‘intertextuality’ and ‘intended use of the translation’, the translator chooses a macro-strategy for the whole text that will guide him/her in all the choices at the lower levels of the text in order to achieve a pragmatically successful translation. It then describes the second phase of production, consisting in the reformulation of the source text into the target language, where the translator selects the strategies to solve the problems identified in the first phase. The strategies descending from the general macro-strategy are first distinguished into the two main translation methods of ‘literal translation’ and ‘paraphrase’ and then, with a top-down procedure, are further distinguished between textual, syntactic and lexical strategies.
English academic discourse, which emerged in the 17th century as a vehicle for the new rationalist/scientific paradigm, was initially a vehicle of liberation from the stifling feudal mindset. Spreading from the hard sciences to the social sciences and on to the humanities, it gradually became the prestige discourse of the Anglophone world, due no doubt to its associations with the power structures of modernity (technology, industry and capitalism); today, mastery of it is essential for anyone wishing to play a role on the international stage. The worldview that this discourse encodes is essentially positivist; it privileges the referential function of language at the expense of the interpersonal or textual and crystallizes the dynamic flux of experience into static, observable blocs, rendering the universe passive, inert and devoid of meaning. Despite its obvious limitations for dealing with a decentred, multi-faceted, post-modern reality, its hegemonic status in the world today is such that other knowledges are rendered invisible or are swallowed up in a process of 'epistemicide'. This paper examines this process from the point of view of the translator: one of the primary gatekeepers of western academic culture. Drawing on surveys carried out in 2002 of Portuguese academics working in the humanities, it attempts to discover just what happens to the very different worldview encoded in traditional Portuguese academic discourse during the process of translation, and goes on to discuss the political and social consequences of the ideological imperialism manifest in editorial decisions about what counts as 'knowledge' in today's world.
A much-cited and highly influential text by Alastair Pennycook, one of the world authorities in sociolinguistics, The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language explores the globalization of English by examining its colonial origins, its connections to linguistics and applied linguistics, and its relationships to the global spread of teaching practices. Nine chapters cover a wide range of key topics including: international politics colonial history critical pedagogy postcolonial literature. The book provides a critical understanding of the concept of the ‘worldliness of English’, or the idea that English can never be removed from the social, cultural, economic or political contexts in which it is used. Reissued with a substantial preface, this Routledge Linguistics Classic remains a landmark text, which led a much-needed critical and ideologically-informed investigation into the burgeoning topic of World Englishes. Key reading for all those working in the areas of Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and World Englishes.
Translation and Globalization is essential reading for anyone with an interest in translation, or a concern for the future of our world’s languages and cultures. This is a critical exploration of the ways in which radical changes to the world economy have affected contemporary translation.
This volume brings together key writings since the 1992 publication of Linguistic Imperialism - Robert Phillipson's controversial benchmark volume, which triggered a major re-thinking of the English teaching profession by connecting the field to wider political and economic forces. Analyzing how the global dominance of English in all domains of power is maintained, legitimized and persists in the twenty-first century, Linguistic Imperialism Continued reflects and contributes in important ways to understanding these developments.