This chapter provided a general overview of the field of scientific and technical translation. After clarifying some issues of terminology and tracing the historical and current significance of scientific and technical translation, the relatively low status of STT in translation studies was illustrated. Based on Snell-Hornby’s stratificational model, we then discussed various distinctive features of STT, such as its strong dependence on subject- matter knowledge, the relevance of notions such as stability and invariance of meaning and the primary communicative function of STT. In this context, we also elaborated on the general relevance of linguistic frameworks to the field of STT. Then, the position of STT between the two poles of source and target text orientation was discussed prior to sketching a prototypical account of STT which attempts to combine the best features of both source and target-text oriented approaches and provides the flexibility to emphasize various dimensions of STT according to specific epistemic aims. To provide more structure to the field of STT to be discussed and analyzed in this thesis, a classification of scientific and technical texts was proposed along the three dimensions of text function, subject-matter competence and degree of technicality. In the following chapters, this classification will serve as a central reference point for the discussion of knowledge requirements and communicative configurations in STT. The chapter concluded with a discussion of STT and linguistic underdeterminacy. It was shown that the underdeterminacy concept could be linked to the classification proposed previously and that the degree of linguistic underdeterminacy may correlate with the degree of technicality and the communicative configuration underlying a text. The next chapter will move to a higher level of abstraction and discuss a philosophical grounding for scientific and technical translation and cognitive linguistics, at the same time providing a bridge between the two fields.
underdetermined that the basic-level term detector. At another level, expert-to-expert discourse will however be more underdetermined since the expert knowledge required to understand these more specific states of affairs will usually not be encoded in the text.
3 A philosophical grounding for scientific and technical translation and
cognitive linguistics
The present chapter is intended to serve as a bridge between the field of scientific and technical translation surveyed in the previous chapter and the framework of cognitive linguistics, which will be illustrated in the next chapter and which will be proposed as a sound and fruitful linguistic basis for STT. The discussion of the distinctive features of STT in 2.4 has shown that this form of translation is commonly associated with complex notions such as narrow scopes of interpretation and the ensuing stability of meaning, conceptual identity or invariance of meaning. However, the different stances taken on these notions in translation studies are based on deeply rooted ontological and epistemological assumptions, which are not often made explicit in theoretical discourse (see Halverson 1997:207-208). Also, it should come as no surprise that considerable tension exists between notions such as stability or invariance of meaning – which are in fact central tenets of STT (see 2.4.2 and 2.4.3) – and many current approaches to translation which have emerged in the wake of the cultural and sociological turns in translation studies. While STT seems to be operating on highly structured and stable frames of reference, postmodernist approaches to translation stress the historical and social contingency of meaning and the principled indeterminacy of human communication, which does not sit particularly well with the idea of stable frames of reference, narrow scopes of interpretation and stability and invariance of meaning.
In light of these considerations, it seems reasonable to extend the discussion of STT with a philosophical dimension and to analyze the epistemological assumptions underlying the contrasting accounts sketched above. The alternative philosophical account presented in the second part of this chapter is intended to reconcile some of these contrasting assumptions and, at the same time, it will serve as the philosophical basis for the cognitive linguistic framework illustrated in the next chapter. The aim of the present chapter is thus twofold. On the one hand, it aims to give a coherent account of the underlying epistemological assumptions of STT, so that the conception of STT entertained in this thesis can be situated in relation to approaches from other theoretical backgrounds. On the other hand, it paves the way for the discussion of cognitive linguistics which will, at several points, fall back on the philosophical foundation laid in the present chapter. The three elements – STT, cognitive linguistics and their shared philosophical basis – will then be brought together in chapter 5, which will provide a cognitive linguistic perspective on
relevant aspects of scientific and technical translation. I will start the discussion by sketching the fundamental philosophical dichotomy underlying the contrasting assumptions mentioned above. It is in relation to this dichotomy that the alternative philosophical approach endorsed by this thesis has to be seen.