ABSTRACT

Despite the crucial role played by translation in the history of scientific ideas and the transmission of knowledge, historians of science have seldom been interested in the translation activity which enabled the spread of those ideas and exerted influence on structures and systems of knowledge. Translation scholars, too, have traditionally shown little interest in theorizing scientific translation. Recent conceptualizations of science as public culture, institution, narrative and rhetorical practice open the way for research on the translation of science to take conceptual and methodological inspiration from studies of discourse, rhetoric, the sociology of science, the history of science, the philosophy of science and other related fields.

This special issue of The Translator foregrounds the work of researchers, within or on the periphery of translation studies, who have begun to interrogate the representation of scientific knowledge through translation. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and models, contributors engage with different perspectives and approaches to help promote the visibility of scientific translation and shed light on its complex relationship with power and the construction of knowledge.

Contributors: Brecht Algoet, Karen Bennett, Lidia Camara, Eva Espasa, Lieve Jooken, Monika Krein-Kühle, Min-Hsiu Liao, Ruselle Meade, Guy Rooryck, Dolores Sánchez, Hala Sharkas, Mark Shuttleworth, Richard Somerset, Liselotte Vandenbussche , Sonia Vandepitte

chapter |10 pages

Translating Science

chapter |21 pages

Translation of a Discipline

The Fate of Rankine's Engineering Science in Early Meiji-era Japan

chapter |22 pages

The Freedom of Expressing One's Ideas

Translating La Mettrie

chapter |20 pages

Textual Evolution

The Translation of Louis Figuier's La Terre avant le déluge

chapter |25 pages

Travelling Certainties

Darwin's Doubts and Their Dutch Translations

chapter |23 pages

Translational Behaviour at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge

A Multilingual Investigation into Popular Science Metaphor in Translation 1

chapter |24 pages

Translating Science: Contexts and Contests

On the Translation of a Misogynist Scientific Treatise in Early Twentieth-Century Spain

chapter |20 pages

Interaction in the Genre of Popular Science

Writer, Translator and Reader

chapter |21 pages

The Use of Glossing in Modern Original Scientific Writing in Arabic

An Influence of Translation?

chapter |23 pages

Register Shifts in Scientific and Technical Translation

A Corpus-in-Context Study