“Amongst surd numbers and Adam’s apples: the trace of translation in the scientific discourse.” Seminar taught by Bertha Gutiérrez Rodilla (Universidad de Salamanca).

Summary:

Generally, scientific translation is attributed with a series of problems related to conceptual complexity and density of specialised texts, as well as the opacity of the terms they use. Without denying the latter, which is surely the origin of a great part of difficulties of scientific translation, during our seminar we will try to show that, in several occasions, the difficulties of the texts and of specialised translation are rather related to the translators themselves and to their ability to do the task they committed to or were given. Concretely, these difficulties are related to important gaps in their education and to their inability to discover the “implicit” factors of the texts, which can become real traps when translating.

By going through several examples from past and present scientific texts, we will try to illustrate these statements. We will also try to help those translators who, at some point, will encounter this type of tasks, in order to improve the design of their “translational strategies” and to overcome the possible difficulties in comprehension and translation that these texts can have.

More information about the seminar: Amongst surd numbers and Adam’s apples