A Toolbox for Critical Translation Analysis in Specialized Discourse

Abstract

This chapter aims to provide a guide for the analysis of specialized translations in language for specific purposes (LSP) texts, especially in technical and scientific fields. It is intended for the advanced student of translation studies at a graduate or postgraduate level, as a template for an effective approach to the comparison of source and target texts, or source/target text analysis. In this approach, the main focus is the construction of the argumentation and the positioning of the writer/translator from seven different dimensions: (1) transitivity, in the Hallidayan sense of the representation of actors, events, situations, and processes through specific types and patterns (Hatim and Mason 1990); (2) modality, in the sense of the relationship of the writer to what is expressed in the text, especially fact and reality (epistemic modality, evidentiality, deontic modality, and so on); (3) nominal composition; (4) interdependency (parataxis and hypotaxis); (5) intertextuality; (6) lexical alternativity (terminology shifts, semi-technical terms, metaphor, metonymy and semiotic alteration, polysemic interference, and so forth); and (7) narrativity (frames of reference, topoi, and so on). The approach is critical, as used by critical discourse analysis (CDA), in the sense of approaching language as a way of constructing reality (Potter, 1996). This toolbox is a result of a research project on terms and concepts in translation studies (TS) theory comprising more than 25 million words. Corpus-based examples will be provided from English/Spanish and English/Arabic parallel corpora.