Exploring the Connections between Cognitive Linguistics and Scientific Technical Translation

Abstract

This dissertation aims at investigating the interface between scientific and technical translation (STT) and cognitive linguistics (CL), placing particular emphasis on the translationally relevant phenomena of explicitation and implicitation. The two concepts are regarded as potential indicators of translational text-context interaction, which may be of specific importance in the knowledge-intense field of STT and which can be modelled within the CL framework. In doing so, the researcher selected An Introduction to Theories of Learning, by Olson and Hergenhan (2009) .This book was later translated into Persian by Ali Akbar Seyf (2016). The researcher started from the linguistic classification of explicitation and implicitation shifts developed by Klaudy/Károly (2005) and tried out exploring the cognition by identification of target texts in ST (in humanities and pure science), finding the available translations in Persian, analyzing the STs according to the framework, analyzing the TTs according to the framework, comparing and contrasting the results discussing the findings. The analysis of the scientific-technical corpus and the discussion of results showed that explicitation and implicitation are indeed well-suited concepts for illustrating the interface between text and context in STT. The quantitative investigation showed that explicitation shifts occur relative less frequently in the translation of STT. Also, the Cognitive Linguistic framework also proved useful in describing the sometimes fuzzy transition zone between explicitation and implicitation and their adjacent concepts on the expansion-explicitation-addition continuum and the reduction-implicitation-omission continuum.