Article ID: CBB794185144

The Letter, the Dictionary and the Laboratory: Translating Chemistry and Mineralogy in Eighteenth-Century France (2016)

unapi

Eighteenth-century scientific translation was not just a linguistic or intellectual affair. It included numerous material aspects requiring a social organization to marshal the indispensable human and non-human actors. Paratexts and actors' correspondences provide a good observatory to get information about aspects such as shipments and routes, processes of translation and language acquisition (dictionaries, grammars and other helpful materials, such as translated works in both languages), texts acquisition and dissemination (including author's additions and corrections, oral presentations in academic meetings and announcements of forthcoming translations).The nature of scientific translation changed in France during the second half of the eighteenth century. Beside solitary translators, it also happened to become a collective enterprise, dedicated to providing abridgements (Collection académique, 1755–79) or enriching the learned journals with full translations of the most recent foreign texts (Guyton de Morveau's ‘Bureau de traduction de Dijon’, devoted to chemistry and mineralogy, 1781–90). That new trend clearly had a decisive influence on the nature of the scientific press itself. A way to set up science as a social activity in the provincial capital of Dijon, translation required a local and international network for acquiring the linguistic and scientific expertise, along with the original texts, as quickly as possible. Laboratory results and mineralogical observations were used to compare material facts (colour, odour, shape of crystals, etc.) with those described in the original text. By providing a double kind of validation – with both the experiments and the translations – the laboratory thus happened to play a major role in translation.

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Authors & Contributors
Ulrich Päßler
Vámos, Éva
Schnyder, Cédric
Hollier, John
Hollier, Anita
Frumer, Yulia
Concepts
Translations
Communication of scientific ideas
Cross-national interaction
Transmission of ideas
Professions and professionalization
Science and literature
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
20th century, early
17th century
Medieval
20th century
Places
France
England
Netherlands
Naples (Italy)
Prussia (Germany)
Japan
Institutions
Académie des Sciences, Paris
Royal Society of London
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