Delving into the ‘Stressful’ Work of Scientific Translators in South América

Abstract

Who are those who form part of the scarce breed called scientific translators? In former times bilingual scientists used to translate texts from within their field, and this was beneficial to their own research. However, as science has grown in size and in power on a colossal scale since the twentieth century, the need for scientific translators has become imperative. Scientific translation is a type of translation that seems to be in increasing demand compared to other types of translation in the world. Parallel to the growth in the demand of scientific translations, there has been a considerable increase in the need for scientific translators particularly in South América. The purpose of this work is to refresh a set of conclusions derived from an itinerant lecture, the first of which was held in 2004 and was purposedly reiterated to disseminate and make known the characteristics of the nature and context of the work of the scientific translator in Spanish-speaking communities, particularly in South América and mainly in Argentina. Although both linguistic and extralinguistic variables must be interwoven to be successfully operative in the work of the scientific translator in such a vast territory, for reasons of space economy, the focus of attention in this work centers on the linguistic assistance that must be provided to the scientific translator in South América. In particular, concepts on genre and register and issues proposed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) will be considered as essential tools for the work of the scientific translator.