Register Shifts in Scientific and Technical Translation

Abstract

This article investigates register shifts in scientific and technical translation, addressing the question of how and to what extent specific features are governed and constrained by register aspects. It examines the translation-relevant items have and be when used as main verbs and their German translation solutions, drawing on a theoretical and methodological framework that takes due account of the context, i.e., the domain(s) underlying the text and reflected in it, and the situation in which the translations fulfill their communicative function in expert-to-expert communication. The data analyzed come from the scientific and technical translation part of the Cologne Specialized Translation Corpus, a high-quality translation corpus designed for translational research. The analysis reveals trends in translation solutions that can be of relevance in translation teaching, professional translation and translation quality assessment. The findings suggest that analyzing register shifts requires translation research to engage with the context, to take account of all textual and extra-textual aspects that trigger specific uses of language in a particular translation. The paper concludes with a call for greater emphasis on the quality of the translation product in corpus compilation, so that researchers may obtain more reliable results and a better understanding of the constrained nature of scientific and technical translation.