Counteracting Domain Loss and Epistemicide in Specialized Discourse: A Case Study on the Translation of Anglophone Metaphors to French

Abstract

Abstract:The dominance of English as the world language of publication has had a decisive impact on the dissemination of information and innovation across cultures, with a resulting tendency to a standardization of scientific conceptualization. This dominance does not only impact scientific and academic discourse, but also the whole range of professional and technical texts representative of various specialized discourses. This paper advocates engaging in the practice of dynamic translation to keep non-English specialized languages alive. Advanced students' analysis of translation projects yields revealing examples of conflicting views of the world, between English and French, in emerging and controversial fields such as "shadow banking" or "human branding". The students' evaluation of alternative solutions to problems of equivalence highlights the cultural gaps which exist within global fields of knowledge and can be interpreted in terms of the intercultural and interlinguistic transfer of specialized metaphor. It is shown that the practice and analysis of translation provide an appropriate approach for a better understanding of languages for specific purposes (LSP) and the development of awareness of domain loss and epistemicide.

Multilingual Research Writing beyond English: The Case of Norwegian Academic Discourse in an Era of Multilingual Publication Practices

“…Building on Bennett's work, Geneviève Bordet argues that French discourse is in danger of falling prey to English as well. She examines the translation of metaphors from English to French and sees translation as one potentially fruitful avenue to counter uncritical adoption of Anglo-American modes of thought and writing into French [27]. Salager-Meyer and colleagues [28], also argue that the changes they observe in Spanish medical writing from 1930 until 1995 can be attributed to Spanish scholars' engagement with English language research and the emergence of guide books and writing courses based on Anglo-American writing traditions.…”

The ‘Carbon Capture’ Metaphor: An English-Arabic Terminological Case Study

“…On the basis of CMT, Merakchi and Rogers (2013) confirmed that conceptual metaphors are used to add coherence to scientific discourse, as they "evoke the knowledge space of a particular source domain or sets of source domains" (Merakchi and Rogers 2013, p. 345). Bordet (2016) also highlighted the fact that conceptual construction of scientific neologisms varies across languages, but metaphors are frequently used. In the context of specialized translation, Merakchi and Rogers (2013) found that the translation of metaphor in scientific texts is crucial in the intercultural and communicative act.…”

“…They also observed that translating specialized metaphors did pose some challenges in terms of the translation strategies available in Malay, the target language (Abdullah and Shuttleworth 2013, p. 617). In this scenario, sometimes translation processes may lead to the standardization of the underlying conceptual constructions from the source specialized domains, and to domain loss or "epistemicide" in target languages and cultures (Bordet 2016). In other words, according to Hultgren (2013, p.166), this is the failing to develop adequate scientific terminology in a national language, especially at conceptual level.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue: Researching, Teaching, and Supporting Research Publication—Issues for Users of English as an Additional Language

“…I have chosen the last of these for what follows. We have two papers from the perspectives of those supporting EAL authors at the level of individual manuscript (an author's editor [4] and a translation specialist [5], two that analyse aspects of the written texts themselves, titles [6] and abstracts [7], to gain insights of value across the community, and two that focus on how novice research authors learn their craft [8,9]. However, across these groupings additional themes are highlighted.…”

“…To what extent do, or should, EAL authors uncritically adopt the ways of writing and constructing knowledge approved by the English-language, Western academy [4,7,8]? What processes and players are key in helping EAL authors gain acceptance for their research articles and how can their contributions be strengthened [4,5,8,9]? How can close analysis of the written text open windows onto successful practices [4,6,7]?…”