Translation and the lingua franca in scientific communication

: The case of the scientific community from Mexico

Abstract

This thesis presents a study of the hybrid scientific discourse developed by a group of Mexican researchers in the area of materials science. The study focuses on the discursive characteristics (i.e. those derived from the interaction between Spanish and English in scientific academic discourse), and the non-discursive factors (i.e. local factors such as economic stability and scientific tradition in Mexico) that affect the visibility of research articles (RA) in international journals of the scientific community from Mexico. A second major focus of the thesis concerns a survey designed to obtain information about the publishing process in international journals, completed by a small group of Mexican researchers from two leading scientific institutions in Mexico, CINVESTAV Queretaro and the Physics Department from UNISON in Mexico. These research centres are located in two different cities in Mexico, Queretaro and Hermosillo.

Through the linguistic analysis of the hybrid discourse developed by Mexican scientists, this thesis intends to study the influence of English as the lingua franca in scientific publication and the changes that such influence has caused in the written production of RA by Mexican researchers in Spanish as the L1 and English as the L2. Additionally, this thesis analyses the representation of scientific publications by Mexican researchers in international scientific databases in order to see what is the relation between the discursive and non-discursive factors that affect Mexican scientists. The main goal of this thesis is to better understand the specialised discoursed used in materials science by Mexican researchers, in order to be able as a technical translator and proof-reader to respond to the needs of the authors and the field to help in the dissemination of their research.

Date of Award	Jul 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Sponsors	Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute
Supervisor	Piotr Blumczynski (Supervisor) & David Johnston (Supervisor)