Abstract
According to the polysystem theory (as described by Even-Zohar in 1990), translation tends to play a dominant role when the genre is new and young in the target system. This article discusses the genre of popular science as a new genre in Taiwan, and examines the potential influence of translations on non-translations. The Chinese edition of Scientific American published in Taiwan, which contains both translations from the English version and non-translations written by Taiwanese scientists, is used as the corpus. A reference corpus which represents the norm of the Chinese science writings is also included in the present study. The text analysis focuses particularly on the linguistic features that indicate how writers interact with the readers, including deixis, personal references, junction, and hedges. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are carried out to investigate the potential influence. Based on the data collected from the magazine, this study finally suggests that the translations have potential influence on the writing of popular science in Taiwan in the way of a more active interaction between the writers and the readers. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 127-140 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Perspectives: Studies in Translatology |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2010 |
Keywords
- Corpus
- Influence of translation
- Interaction
- Popular science