History of science and history of translation: disciplinary commensurability?

Abstract

The history of translation is seen variously as examining the role of translation in historical episodes or investigating the phenomenon or understanding of translation itself historically. These different historiographical perspectives involve potentially different research aims, approaches, concepts, methods and scholarly interlocutors. The paper focuses on this question of disciplinary commensurability in historical studies, and draws parallels between the history of translation and the history of science. Themes addressed include the tensions between local and global, national and transnational histories, and concomitant tensions between established historiographical norms and alternative, interdisciplinary approaches. It is argued that both the history of translation and the history of science are following a similar trajectory, towards a reflexive, transnational history that seeks productive modes of engagement with other historical disciplines. By bringing to the attention of translation scholars some of the key debates in the history of science and by identifying commonalities, this paper hopes to encourage historians of translation and of science to collaborate in the pursuit of a transnational history of science, the conceptual and methodological requirements of which could be usefully fulfilled by that combined expertise.

Translation und Exil (1933–1945) I : Namen und Orte. Recherchen zur Geschichte des Übersetzens

“…Schippel 2016: 21-22). Zum anderen fällt das Interesse an Wissenschaftsemigration in eine aktuell sich vollziehende und breitere Verschränkung von Translations-und Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Olohan 2014), die aus der Entdeckung und fallweisen Rekonstruktion des translatorischen Apriori der Produktion, des Transfers und der Dissemination wissenschaftlichen Wissens resultiert, wobei sie selbst wiederum als besonderes Ergebnis des allgemeinen Interesses an der kulturgeschichtlichen Wirksamkeit von Translation und Translatoren verstanden werden kann (vgl. Kelletat / Tashinskiy / Boguna 2016).…”

Are Citizen Science “Socials” Multilingual? Lessons in (Non)translation from Zooniverse

“…These TS contributions provide a clearer understanding of the production and dissemination of scientific discourse and discovery more broadly, as well as the role translation plays (or doesn't play) in these contexts (cf. Olohan and Salama-Carr 2011;Olohan 2014b). Interestingly, Olohan and Salama-Carr (2011) remarked that the study of scientific discourse and its translation remained largely peripheral in TS, for reasons that include institutional and disciplinary factors and data accessibility/management.…”

Translation encounters and the histories of globalization

“…It assumes that globalization, and more broadly world history, pivot on relatively recent European interventions. It also assumes a diffusionist model, where action emanates from a Western centre, spreading outwards to non-Western peripheries, instead of recognising that the circulation of people, ideas, languages and objects over time has been much more complex and multicentric than that (Olohan, 2014). Such a chauvinist and parochial viewpoint omits many other things too: that much of the forms of human connectivity throughout planetary history were created in other parts of the globe beyond Europe; that the Europeans were late starters in this regard; that much of Europe's alleged distinctiveness and innovative nature was borrowed, usually in unacknowledged ways, from other civilizations, notably China; and that over-emphasis on the role of the so-called 'West' goes together with the equally untenable assumption that globalization must be wholly 'modern' in nature.…”