Tudományfordítás. Episztemológiai kérdések, kutatási módszerek és eredmények = Translating science: Epistemological questions, research methods and findings

Károly, Krisztina (2026) Tudományfordítás. Episztemológiai kérdések, kutatási módszerek és eredmények = Translating science: Epistemological questions, research methods and findings. ALKALMAZOTT NYELVTUDOMÁNY, 2026 (KSZ). pp. 65-92. ISSN 1587-1061

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Abstract

Academic translation is a form of specialized (professional and technical) translation that involves unique characteristics and entails several consequences. Academic translation is not merely a philological activity, as it plays a role in the formation and development of science as well as scientific thinking, and thereby in the preservation of academic multilingualism and the epistemological diversity of humankind. Still, it has received less scholarly attention compared to other areas of specialized translation, such as legal, business, or media translation. This observation also holds true for studies related to English, the lingua franca of our time. The present study therefore explores this special field of translation from three perspectives. First, it explains why and how academic translation fulfils a unique role: what functions it serves in science, scientific thinking, and in the development of scientific discourse; what unique characteristics it has compared to language mediation in other fields; what kinds of research it inspires. The second section reviews the most typical research methods of the field and the most important criteria of reliability and validity related to corpus design. The potential and applications of each methodological approach are illustrated with examples taken from published studies. The third part reviews the findings of empirical research on academic translation, which helps identify the stereotypical challenges of this special form of translation and the competencies and skills required to overcome these. In conclusion, the paper presents the results of research already available, and highlights the research areas that require further investigation with regard to translation in academia into Hungarian and into the lingua franca. A wealth of theoretical and empirical studies addresses the various conceptual, disciplinary, cultural, practical, strategic, and political issues surrounding the translation of science. They all seek to answer the question of what characteristics and conditions enable translations to function as original texts written in that language by native speakers. The paper ends by reviewing these features and criteria.

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