Domain Analysis - Translation Approach to Psychology

General presentation

Translation approach to psychology

The psychological domain is not as culture-bound as other domains (for instance the legal domain). Psychology has undergone an internationalization process ever since its appearance. This is a domain which is constantly developing, as the number of subfields is growing. This huge amount of information needs to be translated so that scientists, specialists, students in psychology could use it in their research. When and how do we translate psychological texts? What are their characteristics, what do we have to take into account when translating them?

In translation, source text elements as well as target text elements need to be constantly compared and analyzed, by pinpointing extratextual and intratextual features for task fulfillment purposes.

Text genres

When talking about text genres in psychology we have to look at two aspects: there are text genres related to psychology as a science, but there is also a tendency of popularization of this domain, which has its specific text genres. The first category includes the following:

- Articles: they are published in psychology journals, they are highly specialized, and they usually describe experiments which take research further. They have specific structure: the article’s purpose is presented first, followed by a short overview of the experiments; afterwards the authors present each experiment in detail stating its purpose, the method used and its results; at the end of the article there is a general discussion about the new information discovered, followed by a conclusion.

- Text books: they are purely informative and not so highly specialized, as they are created for the use of students.

- Psychological tests (IQ tests, personality tests): they are very complex and they are the product of years of studies. They can include different types of questions and tasks.

- Scientific papers presented at conferences

The second category includes:

- Magazine/newspaper articles: they are conceived by specialists and non-specialists for the large public and they apply psychology to every day life.

- Books: these are books that help people understand themselves and the ones around them. (these can be the so-called “how to” books: ‘How to understand your husband’, ‘How to be the best at your workplace’, ‘How to be the perfect leader’)

- TV shows