Finding Equivalence In Translation Of Scientific Texts

Morcos discussed questions she has
dealt with when editing scientific translations.
What in the manuscript is from the
translator, and what is from the author?
Do you eliminate wordiness, or is this the style of the source language, the author, or
the translator? Are content errors made?
because the translator is not familiar with
the subject matter? Has the author made a
mistake?
A power struggle, said Morcos, often
exists between the translator and the editor.
The best translator is also an editor.
Translators who are not editors will not
focus on the things an editor would focus
on, such as consistency of terms throughout
a manuscript, adhering to a particular style in scientific texts. The idea of translation invoked here is problematical and does not even begin to
address the substantive issues connected with it. And as Buchwald (1993) notes, such
a neat picture does not seem to be tenable. He points out that the presence of
intranslatability was clearly evident in Hertzs attempt at understanding Maxwells
ideas about charge and electricity. He uses this example to argue that even with this
intranslatability, Hertz was convinced that Maxwell did make consistent sense
. In essence, he dismisses the problem of translation and replaces it with the act
of expropriation, which he sees as an activity which regularly occurs in science
. But Buchwald does not address the presuppositions behind the act of translation
nor does he acknowledge the complexity of translation itself. As with Kuhn, this
view of translation is nave in the sense described above.
Galison (1997: ) offers a more sustained critique of the idea of translation in science, both at the level of discourse and praxis. Instead of a model of translation, he suggests that it is the formation of languages at the boundary of different disciplines that is relevant.

He concludes that it is the notion of trading that
illustrates the way scientific communities interact and languages so formed at the
boundaries are more in common with languages like Creole and pidgin. But his
reading of translation is also limited as attested to by his comments that the idea of
temporality is not captured in the model of translation. He also believes that translation
is insensitive to the sociological issues pertaining to the dynamics of language.
These are contentions that a serious view of translation will not allow. The link
between translation and science that I develop below will make this explicit. It is clear that there has been minimum engagement between the discourses of translation and those of science. Also, this engagement, when it occurs, has been overshadowed by a dominant emphasis on the nave view of translation. Fundamentalphilosophical and literary considerations of translation are completely absent in these approaches. This is surprising, because translation is at the heart of the scientific discourse. This is so for a variety of reasons. The multisemiotic nature of scientific
texts makes this clear at the level of texts. The complexity involved in reading
and writing these texts also involves moving from one language system to another.
The presence of translation in these activities should be made visible and its consequences
exhibited because it informs us about the possibilities of the formation of
the scientific discourse itself. The philosophical foundations of science are also related
to the ideas of translation. Science attempts to write the text of the original world.
The notion of original is central to both translation and science. It is the response to
the call of the original that creates the discursive structure of science, including the
manifestation of categories like verification and approximation. Even philosophy of
science, placed as it is between two distinct discourses, philosophy and science, is a
discourse which has to constantly engage with the problems of translation. Contemporary
theories of translation, drawing upon the experiences of translators and also
philosophical reflections on it, suggest new categories through which we can understand
science, both as writing and praxis. The fundamental presupposition of translationthe translatability of textsis itself under question, not just at the level of practice but also at the conceptual level.

But this does not imply the impossibility of translation. As translators have long
showed, there are various ways by which one can approach translation of particular
texts and specific genres. In this paper, I shall attempt to articulate some ideas on
translation drawn from literature and philosophy and exhibit their relation to the
scientific discourse. The division is not one of disciplines. It is more a division that arises as a consequence of a demarcation in terms of theory and practice.

Bethany Thivierge, biomedical writer
and editor and owner of Technicality
Resources, discussed the nature of worthwhile
work: clear goals, stable rules, and an
optimal match between the challenges and the
skills. Applied to scientific translation, conscientious
efforts in this regard will benefit
clients, audiences, and translators.

Scientific communication depends on two sets of rules: laws of nature and the principles of language. Effective scientific translators must understand not only the fundamental science they are translating
but also the principles of two writtenlanguages: the source language and thetarget language. With that understanding comes the recognition of cultural differences, which fosters respect in querying
an author. The optimal match between challenges and skills remains elusive, said Thivierge.


In conclusion, Thivierge discussed nine
desired items:
Work appropriate for the intended audience.
Respect for choices made by the author.
Respect for preferences.
Understanding of sciences.
Understanding of languages.
Constructive queries.
Work suitable for publication.
Familiarity with current practices
Timely exchange of work.

The neglect of translation in the re-writing of scientific texts is due to many reasons. Let me focus on one reason that recurs repeatedly in our understanding ofthe scientific discourse and which is related to a view of natural language that science
holds. In theoretical texts, as in quantum and relativity theories, it is presumed that
the essential content of the text is contained in the mathematical sub-text.
.
The natural
language component of the text, whether in persian or English, is seen not to have substantial content as far as the meaning of that texts is concerned. This is also emphasized in the text in the form of the mathematical equations that remain the
same whether the theory is written in English or persian.

And since these equations carry the essential content, what does it matter what natural languages one uses? This is, roughly, the argument that explains sciences total disdain for the concerns of
translation. I shall not develop a response to this now; here, I merely want to mention
that scientific texts are beholden to both mathematical and natural language


sub-texts. And the concerns of translation are also not indifferent to mathematics.
This argument is also related to the third kind of translation, namely, intersemiotic Translation by jakobson. I think it is clear that in the case of mathematics, there is always the presence of translation in the way we continuously interpolate from symbols to natural language.


The semiotic system of mathematics does not derive any meaning without prior reference to natural language. In reading and writing the scientific text, there is always a movement from one semiotic system to another.

There is no other mechanism, other than translation, that can effectively explain how it is possible for us to generate coherent meaning of such texts. This will then imply that a scientific text, which glosses over the issue of translation in order to present a unified text as if the problems of translation across different semiotic systems are absent, is only one translation among many other possible translations. The use of diagrams, figures,
tables, charts and so on in the scientific discourse also relates the scientific activity to
the concerns of intersemiotic translation.

conclusion



What I have attempted to do in the last section is to identify central issues related to the theory and practice of translation drawn from literary translation. Since the practitioners of translation engage with particular texts and specific languages, the central issues reflect these disciplinary concerns; thus the identification of categories
like equivalence, rules of translation, invariant core of texts, the idea of the foreign,
minor literature, authorship and so on. These categories, derived from literature,
already point to a need to go beyond a nave view of translation. Most importantly,
in the context of this paper, this expanded view of translation was shown to be of
relevance to an understanding of the scientific discourse.
There are other approaches to thematizing translation that exhibit its conceptual
foundations. Like other disciplines, philosophy has also not given prominence to the
question of translation. Translation of scientific text as we have seen is problematic issues.