Translating sports science journals into English: A case study

Abstract

Responding to the increasing use of English as the academic lingua franca, some non-anglophone sports science journals are published bilingually through translation, which has received limited scholarly attention. This study aims to answer three questions concerning the motivations for translating sports science journals into English, the management of their translation process and translators’ perceptions of translator competences, difficulties and use of CAT tools. Questions one and two were addressed through thematic analyses of three sports science journals’ websites, while question three was dealt with through questionnaires administered among fifteen sports science translators recruited via convenience sampling. The results indicate that both pragmatic and ideological motivations drive the translation of non-anglophone sports science journals, which helps them seek internationalisation without sacrificing their non-anglophone identity and that there is a lack of an agreed mechanism for translation process management, which prevents the standardisation of translation practice and quality assessment. The participants prioritised some competences (use of terminologies and technological tools, understanding and interpretation of sports science, etc.) over others (pre-existing knowledge, familiarity with relevant literature, etc.). They perceive terminologies as the most common difficulty in translating sports science and believe that certain features of sports science texts make it possible to use CAT tools.