Academic translation for historical research presents special challenges for the professional translator. In some cases, key concepts may have standard translations in the target language, so the translator must carefully research such terms.

For instance, the French Marxist historian Lucien Febvre coined the phrase histoire vue d’en bas to describe a historical approach focused on the masses. A literal translation reads “history seen from below,” but the phrase has traditionally been translated as “history from below” and has been used by English-language historians such as Howard Zinn. Therefore, any translator today should maintain “history from below” because this has become an independent and influential concept in English.

In some cases in academic translation it may be best to keep an expression in the source language because of its unique historical or cultural reality…Continue reading on the Academic Language Experts blog