cientific translation and imagery: a pilot study into subjective aspects of meaning in academic prose based on the use of several translations of a single source text

Abstract

Scientific – and, more broadly, academic – discourse is often associated with impersonality, objectivity and a focus on facts. However, over the last two decades or so more and more linguistic studies have shown that it includes numerous linguistic elements that express the author’s subjective assessment of, attitude to or viewpoint on facts and scientific findings, the use of which is aimed at increasing the persuasiveness of the text. Therefore, it seems reasonable to enquire into what happens to the subjective elements of an academic text in translation, especially in view of the fact that translations ultimately express translators’ own interpretations, or conceptualizations, of the source text which may also be influenced by subjective factors, such as one’s personal knowledge, beliefs, cognitive abilities and experience. This paper presents a pilot study on subjective aspects of meaning in the translation of an academic text, based on the use of a miniature one-to-many parallel corpus consisting of a single English source text and its five Polish translations. The basic assumption behind this methodology is that multiple translations of the same source text produced by different translators should express the same “objective” content, which may, however, be construed differently as a result of shifts in the subjective aspects of meaning. A semantic analysis in terms of Ronald Langacker’s dimensions of imagery (aka focal adjustments) – so far mainly used to examine semantic “minutiae” in literary texts – bears out the hypothesis and casts some interesting light on the nature of the semantic shifts in question. Given the role of translation in the dissemination of knowledge and the important function of the subjective elements of an academic text, it is suggested that it is worth applying the concept of equivalence at the level of imagery in studies of the translation of academic prose.