專家與譯者對科學教科書讀者理解程度的影響

長久以來科普書籍到底該由相關學門的專家，還是專職譯者來翻譯並無定論。一般人認為專職譯者不具備科學訓練背景，在專業內容上容易翻錯；但理工背景專家的文筆可能不夠流暢，譯文易流於艱澀難懂。本研究嘗試比較這兩種不同背景譯者所翻譯的科學譯文。不過科普書籍範圍廣泛，不易比較，因此本研究以內容較嚴謹單純的教科書當作測試文本，並以大學物理課本為例，來探討學生讀者對於學門專家與專職譯者所產製譯文的理解程度。本研究選取一本大學物理教課書譯本中的三段文章，由原來翻譯此文章的大學教授譯者修訂的譯文定為原譯；由英文系畢業之專職譯者翻譯的譯文定為改譯。接著針對此三篇文章設計測驗題目，並交由四所不同大學的學生分組施測，兩組得分經由t 檢定統計分析判斷其得分是否有顯著差異。本研究除以質性文本分析方式突顯學門專家與專職譯者的譯文特色之外，並經由量性統計結果得知，由大學教授和專職譯者翻譯的譯文，對讀者在理解文章內容上並無明顯差異，顯示科學文章由具何種背景之譯者來翻譯影響不大。雖然本研究中的譯者樣本數有限，而且針對譯者背景的影響亦需要未來研究釐清，但期望研究結果仍可提供出版社選擇科學文本譯者時的參考。

關鍵字

譯者背景；科學翻譯；理解程度

並列摘要

It has been debated for a long time that translators with what backgrounds are more suitable for translating scientific texts. While professional translators are usually thought of having the tendency to make mistakes because of their lacking of scientific knowledge, college professors, who understand the subject matter better, are sometimes believed not able to write fluently and clearly. This study therefore attempts to compare scientific texts translated by a college professor and a professional translator from readers’ point of view to decide which translation is more comprehensible. However, subjects covered by the popular scientific books are usually too miscellaneous to study and their styles are usually too versatile to analyze. On the other hand, the writing of scientific textbooks is mostly straight forward and more suitable for this study. A translated version of a popular college physics textbook therefore was chosen as the test material for the first stage in this study. Three articles were chosen from the textbook. One of the original translators of the textbook, a college professor, was invited to rewrite the translations and the result was used as the original translation. A professional translator, who owns an English Literature college degree, was asked to translate the same articles. Tests based on these translations were designed and given to college students from four universities around Taiwan. Their scores were analyzed using the statistic software SPSS to see if their mean score differences were statistically significant. Results of this study show that translations by the two translators are not significantly different from the student readers’ point of view. Whether scientific textbooks should be translated by professors or professional translators makes no significant differences. Publishers and translation industry may take note of this but further studies on scientific translations are needed to learn more about the influences of the translators’ background on translation quality.