Translation is an ancient craft but a relatively young discipline. Since the 1960s, when some linguists began to give a theoretical basis to the activity of translating, the institutionalisation of translation as an academic discipline was carried out under the auspices of linguistics, a discipline that, as Neubert (1998: 15) recalls, was itself hailed as âa science piloteâ. Until the 1980s translation was therefore considered as a branch of applied linguistics, whose absolute and indisputed paradigm was that of contrastive linguistics, i.e. the study of cross-language correspondences between language pairs. In keeping with this, early linguistic theories of translation were more focused on the formal traits of language than on the features that characterise them today, which are the relations between language patterns, the translators using them and the social/cultural context in which they were used (cf. Baker 2000: 31â32). Crucially, however, by the early 1970s translation was also taking its first steps as an autonomous discipline. The traditional starting point for this process is set in the paper âThe Name and Nature of Translation Studiesâ, delivered in Amsterdam in 1972 at the Third International Conference of Applied Linguistics by James Holmes, who coined the name âTranslation Studiesâ to highlight the interdisciplinary and humanistic nature of translation (Holmes 1988 [1972]).
In the early 1980s, the concepts of âtextual domainsâ and âsimilar communicative situationsâ of the source text and target text (from now onwards, ST and TT respectively) were introduced in translation via the text-linguistic paradigm and within a more general âpragmatic turnâ1 of linguistics (Snell-Hornby 2006: 35â40). These two concepts proved to be particularly useful in specialised translation because they provided the basis for âcomparableâ texts, called back then âparallel textsâ, which are texts similar in topic and text type that were produced independently of each other by the source language and target language (from now onwards, SL and TL respectively) and are a crucial source of information for specialised translators. In the same decade, a new paradigm of translation also began to emerge, which moved beyond a purely linguistic approach and was both process-oriented and interdisciplinary. Despite being still viewed as a fundamentally linguistic activity, translation began to be seen, on the one hand, as having its focus on the process of translating (hence the so-called âtranslation process researchâ or TPR) rather than on the translation product (i.e. the translated text) and, on the other, encompassing components from other neighbouring disciplines as well as the various specialised domains of the texts to be translated. In the wake of this paradigm shift, Translation Studies also began to be viewed as a discipline that itself influences the conceptual and methodological frameworks of other research areas. The new focus on process has also inevitably brought the academic discipline of Translation Studies closer to the professional practice of translation and the practical methodology for producing and revising translations. It has also reduced the predominance of linguistics, which continues nevertheless to be crucial in a discipline that is still inevitably anchored in language.
This introductory chapter provides a first stab at defining the scope of specialised translation, which will be discussed in more detail at the beginning of Chap. 2. In the first part of the chapter (Sect. 1.1), my general goal will be to define the object of specialised translation, i.e. Languages for Special Purposes or LSPs, which are also called with the collective term âspecialised (or LSP) discourseâ to reflect more clearly the specialist user and domain of use of language in contexts which are typical of a specialist community, either academic or professional or technical (cf. Gotti 2011: 15). Indeed, it is because of these different contexts that, besides the formal differences of LSPs resulting from the different specialised topics, there is also a pragmatic variation of LSPsâ features in response to different situations of language use (Sect. 1.1.1). After an overview of the general pragmatic criteria of use of LSPs (Sect. 1.2.1) and the general formal features which are distinctive of LSPs vs. everyday language (Sect. 1.2.2), using a top-down approach I next analyse the linguistic features of LSPs at the levels of text, syntax and terminology (Sect. 1.2.3â1.2.5). In the succeeding two sections of the chapter, I will then discuss the dominance of Anglo-American models in the communication of scientific and technological knowledge, especially in academic discourse (1.3), and the importance of specialised translation in todayâs language industry (1.4). In the final section of the chapter (1.5), I will define contrastively specialised translation vis-Ă -vis literary translation, despite sharing Rogersâ (2015: 2) view that these two translation macroareas are in fact not in opposition but complementary one to the other.
1.1 Defining Special Languages
Special languages are language varieties found in documents with a predominant emphasis on the information they convey and directed to a more or less restricted target specialist community, ranging from experts to laypersons and having very specific professionally or subject-related communicative needs and expectations. In a restricted sense, these language varieties are characterised by (1) distinctive terminological features and (2) a specialised use of textual, syntactical and lexical features which have been drawn from âgeneralâ everyday language, the so-called âLanguage for General Purposesâ (LGP , from now onwards âgeneral languageâ). These features are in fact not exclusive of LSPs but only more frequent than in general language, so that between LSPs and general language there is more a continuum than a clear-cut delimitation (e.g. Varantola 1986). The specific features of LSPs are used in pragmatically specific ways to provide scientists and professionals with the most effective and functional communication tool for specific topics and activities, and also serve as a social tool to recognise and acknowledge their usersâ shared belonging to a specific group of specialists. Between the specialised knowledge of a given discipline and its specialised discourse there is in fact a particularly close relationship. The language of science represents a case in point. The linguist who stands out above the rest for his cognitive view of the indivisibility of language from scientific content is Michael Halliday (1993[1988]: 74): âit is the practice, the activity of âdoing scienceâ, that is enacted in the forms of the language [âŠ]. It is this reality that is construed in scientific discourseâ. An even stronger version of the homology between scientific knowledge and the language used to convey it is typically held by scientists, who stress the differences between, on the one hand, the different âuniversesâ created by the contents, procedures and argumentation practices of different disciplines and, on the other, between the LSPs of each discipline, with each LSP âcreating a new way of perceiving the universeâ (Bruschi 1999: 56, my translation and emphasis in the original).
The special languages that will be dealt with in this book as being the object of specialised translation do not include LSPs in a broad sense, i.e. language varieties which, despite being typical of specific topics and communicative contexts, are not characterised by homogeneous distinctive features especiallyâthough not exclusivelyâat the lexical/terminological level. Examples of this broader type of LSPs are the language of texts written for potential tourists (e.g. tourist guides and travelogues) and also the language of politics, whose terminological features are not distinctive but are rather drawn from other LSPs, such as the languages of law, economics, finance, administration etc., and indeed the LSP of any specialised domain which happens to be the specific topic of the communication activity. Neither do they include jargons, which despite being characterised by distinctive lexical features, are language varieties based more on specific groups of users than on specialised topics (e.g. youth urban slang). Instead, the object of study of this book are the LSPs found in âsci-techâ texts, which are typically translated in the context of science and technology.
Strictly speaking, whilst being complementary, science and technology designate different, if related, knowledge domains. To put it in a nutshell, âscience produces ideas whereas technology results in the production of usable objectsâ (Wolpert 1992: 25). The goal of science is the study of objective truths about the world using a systematic process called the âscientific methodâ, which is the foundation of modern scientific enquiry and involves the following four basic steps: identification of a problem; formulation of a hypothesis; practical or theoretical testing of the hypothesis; rejection or adjustment of the hypothesis if it is falsified (Walliman 2011: 177). Technology, on the other hand, is the practical application of science to create products that can solve problems and do tasks. From a linguistic point of view, the language of science is concept-oriented whilst in technology it is object-oriented (Newmark 1988: 155). Another difference concerns t...