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The Journal of Specialised Translation Issue 10 - July 2008

The thesis statement in translations of academic discourse: an

exploratory study

Agnes Pisanski Peterlin

Department of Translation, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that languages exhibit substantial differences in the conventions of

academic discourse. The thesis statement has been identified as one of the conventions

in which differences between languages have been observed. This paper analyses thesis-

statement use and form in a corpus of 90 geography research articles: Slovene originals,

their English translations, and English originals are compared in terms of thesis-

statement use and form. The results show that the thesis statement is used more

frequently in original English research articles than in original Slovene research articles,

and that the English translations of the latter correspond to the Slovene originals. The

results also reveal differences between the two sets of originals in terms of thesis-

statement position and the degree of authorial presence, again with the English

translations corresponding to the Slovene originals. A comparison of the Slovene originals

and their English translations identifies certain changes made during translation. The

findings of this study suggest that the differences in thesis-statement use and form

between the two languages could create problems in translation.

KEYWORDS

Academic discourse, thesis statement, rhetorical conventions, research article, language

for specific purposes.

1. Introduction

The translation of academic discourse involves complex issues arising at

different levels. These range from the general approach or translation

strategy used by the translator to issues involving a particular text or

even its constituent linguistic or textual features. In her discussion of

translation for specific purposes focusing on economics texts, Stolze

(2003: 189) points out that “[w]ith respect to the intrinsic relationship

between the text as a whole and its constitutional elements, the holistic

view is being complemented by an analysis of the predicative mode, which

shows in the particular style of the text characterising its author.”

Although it is clear that a holistic view of the text is essential for providing

a theoretical framework for translating academic discourse, data obtained

through exploratory and in-depth studies of the issues arising in this type

of translation can complement a holistic approach.

This paper presents an exploratory empirical study of a single rhetorical

convention: the use and form of the thesis statement in research articles.

Using a corpus of 90 geography research articles comprising three sets of

texts (original Slovene research articles, their English translations, and

original English research articles), differences are identified between the

The Journal of Specialised Translation Issue 10 - July 2008

Slovene and English originals on the one hand, and the Slovene originals

and their English translations on the other. The aim of this paper is to

investigate issues related to the thesis statement when research articles

are translated from Slovene into English. This is based on the hypothesis

that there may be substantial differences in thesis-statement use and

form between the two languages, which could lead to problems in

translation.

2. The translation of academic discourse

A lack of interest in issues involving the translation of academic discourse

has been pointed out by researchers working in this field. In his overview

of the historical development of technical and scientific translation, Franco

Aixelá (2004) shows that this type of translation has been traditionally

neglected in theoretical discussions, although he notes a gradual change

in attitude. Similarly, Sarukkai (2001: 650) observes that the problems in

translating scientific texts are hardly ever addressed. This neglect

suggests that the translation of academic discourse has been perceived as

straightforward, of marginal importance, and perhaps infrequent. This

perception, however, does not reflect the real picture: academic discourse

is in fact translated relatively frequently. Outside the English-speaking

world, many journals demand that abstracts be submitted in at least two

languages, many university departments require translations of thesis and

dissertation abstracts, certain journals publish parallel versions of the

same paper in two languages, individual researchers commission the

translation of their papers into English, and so on. Moreover, academic

translation is multifaceted and involves complex issues and translation

problems ranging from terminology to genre- and culture-bound

conventions.

It has been suggested that the concept of academic discourse involves an

apparent paradox: as Mauranen (1993) points out, academic writing is

both universal (because it originates in the universality of science) and

simultaneously variable (because it reflects cultural variation). Studies in

contrastive rhetoric (e.g., Dahl 2004; Yakhontova 2002; Vassileva 2001;

Čmejrková 1996; Mauranen 1993; Hinds 1987) have identified substantial

differences in the conventions of academic writing across languages.

Within the field of Translation Studies, similar observations have been

made. Thus, on the basis of her findings, Hoorickx-Raucq (2005: 105)

argues that “the discourse of science in our global world is still highly

cultural both in its textual structures or sequencing and in its cognitive

processes.”

The logical question that such findings raise is whether adherence to

target language conventions is necessary in translation. In his discussion

of this topic, Siepmann (2006: 144–45) rejects the views proposed by

Stolze & Deppert (1998: 127), who argue in favour of a compromise

The Journal of Specialised Translation Issue 10 - July 2008

between preservation and adaptation, and he calls for “optimum

adherence to the stylistic norms of the target language.”

3. The thesis statement

One of the conventions in which languages may differ is the use of the

thesis statement. The thesis statement is a sentence (or, less frequently,

a string of sentences), generally appearing at the end of the introductory

section of the paper, stating the main idea or principal goals of the paper.

Although the term itself is used chiefly in the context of essay writing for

teaching first-, second-, and foreign-language writing, it is sometimes

used in reference to other genres. In this paper, it is used in the context

of academic writing; specifically, the research article. In Swales’ (1990)

model for a rhetorical structure in research article introductions (the

revised CARS model based on an earlier CARS model proposed by Swales

in 1981), the thesis statement corresponds to Step One in Move Three

(outlining purposes or announcing present research within the context of

occupying the niche).

Although the thesis statement has been recognised as a convention of

English academic discourse and is presented as an important feature in

EAP textbooks (e.g., Swales & Feak 1999), there is less certainty about

the status of the thesis statement in Slovene academic writing. Previous

research has established that Slovene academic writing is less writer-

responsible (in terms of Hinds’ 1987 typology) than English academic

writing (cf. Pisanski Peterlin, 2005), which suggests that the thesis

statement, the purpose of which is to facilitate the reading of the text,

may appear less frequently in Slovene academic texts. Moreover, Petrić

(2005: 214) reports that contrastive studies of English and Slavic

languages (e.g., Duszak 1994; Čmejrková 1996) have revealed that

delayed expression of purpose and gradual development of the thesis are

important features of Slavic languages, which further supports the

hypothesis.

4. Materials and method

4.1 Corpus

The corpus used in this analysis is composed of 90 units, all of them

geography research articles, and is subdivided into three subcorpora: the

ACTA-S Subcorpus, the ACTA-E Subcorpus, and the AG Subcorpus. The

ACTA-S Subcorpus consists of 30 Slovene geography articles and the

ACTA-E Subcorpus consists of the English translations of these Slovene

articles. All of the texts were published between 1999 and 2005 in Acta

Geographica Slovenica, a Slovene geography journal published by the

Anton Melik Geographical Institute, dedicated mainly to Slovene

geography. The AG Subcorpus consists of 30 English research articles,

published between 2001 and 2006 in Applied Geography, an international

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geography journal published by Elsevier dedicated to the application of

geographical theory and methodology to the resolution of human

problems.

4.2 Method

The thesis statement was identified in the texts following three criteria.

The first criterion was its function. The thesis statement is not a formal

category, and therefore, a functional analysis was necessary for

identification of thesis statements. The thesis statement was defined as

the sentence(s) stating the main idea(s), purpose(s), result(s), and/or

scope of the research article. The second criterion was its location.

Sentences corresponding to the above definition were identified as thesis

statements only if they appeared in the introductory section of the

research article, whereas similar statements in other sections of the

research article were not considered thesis statements. The third criterion

was explicitness. It was required that explicit reference to the function of

the thesis statement be made within the thesis statement itself, either by

referring to the research article itself (e.g., “this article considers, in this

article/paper, here,” etc.) or, by extension, to the authors (e.g., “we”).

The analysis was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, all of the

introductory sections of the articles in the three subcorpora were manually

scanned and instances of thesis statements were identified according to

the criteria presented above. In the second stage of the analysis, the

results for the three subcorpora were compared in terms of thesis-

statement frequency, thesis-statement position within the introduction,

and the degree of authorial involvement as expressed in the form of the

thesis statement. In the third stage of analysis, the results for individual

Slovene originals in the ACTA-S Subcorpus and their English translations

in the ACTA-E Subcorpus were examined: the degree of correspondence in

thesis-statement use and form was noted for each original and translation

pair.

5. Results

The results of the first and second stages of the analysis are presented in

Tables 1–3, and the results of the third stage of the analysis are

presented in Table 4. Table 1 presents basic information on the size of the

subcorpora. In addition, the frequency of thesis-statement use is

expressed, both in terms of the number of research articles which

contained a thesis statement as well as the percentage of research articles

which contained a thesis statement.

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ACTA-S ACTA-E AG

Subcorpus size (words) 130,000 150,000 200,000

Research articles in the

subcorpus (n)

30 30 30

Research articles

containing a thesis

statement (n)

16 16 25

Research articles

containing a thesis

statement (%)

53.3 53.3 83

Table 1. Subcorpus size in terms of words and texts and the frequency of thesis-

statement use in a subcorpus

The data presented in Table 1 clearly show that the use of the thesis

statement was more restricted in the Slovene research articles and their

translations (in 53.3%) than in the original English research articles,

where it was used in over 80% of the texts.

Table 2 presents the position of the thesis statements identified in the

corpus in terms of three microlocations (initial, medial, and final) within

the introductory section.

ACTA-S ACTA-E AG

Initial (%) 6 (37.5) 6 (37.5) 5 (20)

Medial (%) 2 (12.5) 2 (12.5) 5 (20)

Final (%) 8 (50) 8 (50) 15 (60)

Table 2. Thesis-statement position in the introductory section

The data presented in Table 2 indicate that a preference for the final

position can be observed within all three subcorpora. However, this

preference is somewhat more pronounced in the original English research

articles than in the Slovene originals and their English translations.

Table 3 presents the form of the thesis statement in terms of explicit

authorial presence. The degree of authorial presence is schematically

divided into three categories: personal subject (including thesis

statements containing a personal construction, such as the first-person

pronoun in English or a first-person singular/dual/plural verb in Slovene),

passive voice (encompassing thesis statements containing a verb in the

passive voice), and inanimate subject (covering thesis statements

containing an inanimate subject with the active voice, such as “this

paper,” “the main goal of this article,” etc.).

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ACTA-S ACTA-E AG

Personal subject (%) 37.5 37.5 24

Passive voice (%) 12.5 12.5 18.8

Inanimate subject

(active, %)

50 50 58

Table 3. Degree of explicit authorial involvement in the thesis statement

The data presented in Table 3 show that inanimate subjects with the

active voice were the preferred thesis-statement form in the original

English texts, in which personal subjects and the passive voice were used

considerably less frequently. The Slovene originals and their English

translations, however, showed a somewhat greater preference for

inanimate subjects over personal subjects, whereas the passive voice was

used relatively rarely.

Table 4 presents the results established through a comparison of the

thesis statements appearing in the Slovene originals and their English

translations. Each thesis statement in the Slovene original was compared

with the corresponding thesis statement in the English translation and the

degree of correspondence was first determined in terms of two categories:

the translation was assessed as either literal (the choice of words,

grammatical form, and discourse function coincide) or not, in which case it

was classified as 'changed.'

Degree of

correspondence

Literal translation (%) 8 (50)

Change in translation (%) 8 (50)

Table 4. Degree of correspondence between Slovene texts and their English

translations

The results show that, even though close correspondence in translation

has been observed so far (cf. Tables 1–3), some change did occur in half

of the translations of thesis statements.

6. Discussion

The above results show considerable differences in thesis-statement use

between the Slovene originals and their English translations on the one

hand, and the English originals on the other. The frequent use of the

thesis statement in the English originals (83% of texts) agrees with the

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findings of previous research (e.g., Myers, 1992; Paltridge, 1997), which

indicated that the thesis statement is a feature of English academic

discourse. Moreover, the far less systematic use of thesis statements in

the Slovene originals (these appeared in just over half of the texts)

corresponds to the findings of contrastive research on English and Slavic

languages (e.g., Duszak, 1994; Čmejrková, 1996).

A comparison of the thesis-statement position within the introductory

section revealed that the final position was preferred in all of the

subcorpora. This is not surprising: as has been pointed out, the thesis

statement corresponds to Step One in Move Three within the theoretical

framework of the CARS model proposed by Swales (1990). Move Three is,

of course, the last of the three moves in the introduction identified by

Swales. The findings of this study, however, suggest that thesis

statements were used outside this framework (in initial and the medial

positions) somewhat more frequently in the Slovene originals and their

English translations than in the English originals. Examples of a Slovene

original (1a) and its English translation (1b), in which the thesis statement

occurs in initial position, are given below:

(1a) 1 Uvod

Pričujoči članek želi prikazati širitev mesta Ljubljana in postopen premik njegove

južne meje na Ljubljansko barje. Izhajal sem iz dejstva, da se je Ljubljana zelo

pozno začela širiti proti jugu, torej na barje, kljub temu pa je vrh največje

urbanizacije že dosežen. Predpostavil sem, da proces poselitve še ni zaključen,

vendar pa so začrtane že vse glavne smeri in da je večji del območja že poseljen.

(1b) 1 Introduction

This article presents the expansion of the City of Ljubljana and the gradual spread

of its southern border onto the Ljubljansko Barje moor. My starting point was the

fact that Ljubljana started to expand southward onto the moor very late, but in

spite of this, the peak of the greatest urbanization has already been achieved. I

assumed that although the process of settling is not yet finished, all the major

directions have been established and the major part of the area has already been

settled.

Example 2 from an English translation illustrates a more common final

position of the thesis statement within the introductory section.

(2) 1 Introduction

Walking in the mountains, one sometimes contemplates the transitory nature of

things; only the mountains seem to remain eternally the same in their beauty.

Mountains are formed and exist for long millions of years, but they too slowly

disappear and finally make way for something new. This changing of the relief

takes place before our eyes, but we generally do not notice it because of the short

duration of our lives (Natek 1985). Wind, water in all forms, temperature changes,

and gravity slowly and steadily release and carry material from the mountains down

to the valleys. Periodically, large rock masses or even entire hillslopes suddenly roll

down into the valleys, which is why the relief in the Alps changes relatively quickly.

In the occurrence of rockfalls, Slovenia’s Alps are no exception. We are never

aware of smaller rockfalls because they occur more frequently in uninhabited or

remote areas. We are only reminded of them by geomorphic processes of larger

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dimensions that cause damage to residential and infrastructure objects (Pavšek

1994; Komac and Zorn 2002). Rockfalls are generally one of the more visible and

faster geomorphic processes. They occur on steeper hillslopes in the mountain

world as well on the steep banks of rivers and coastal cliffs. In this article, only a

few examples from Slovenia’s alpine world are treated.

With regard to the authorial presence, several interesting observations

can be made. Although impersonality is often regarded as a typical feature

of academic discourse, several authors have pointed out that personal

presence is a necessary feature as well. Thus Hyland (2001: 223) argues

that the use of personal structures (or self-mention) is important in

academic writing; he claims that the “points at which writers choose to

announce their presence in the discourse are those where they are best

able to promote themselves and their individual contributions.” In other

words, although impersonality is a feature of academic discourse which is

used to create distance between the author and the ideas expressed in the

text, thus conveying an impression of objectivity, the use of authorial

presence is a way of promoting the author’s role as the individual

responsible for the creation of the text. The form of the thesis statement

reflects this personal vs. impersonal structure dichotomy in the choice

between a personal subject on the one hand, and the passive voice or an

inanimate subject with the active voice on the other. The more subtle

difference between the two impersonal constructions – the passive voice

and the inanimate subject – has been explained by Martínez (2001), who

claims that the passive voice, in which the agent is often recoverable (in

the case of the thesis statement, generally as the author), is somewhat

less impersonal than a sentence with an inanimate subject.

A comparison of the results of this study shows that certain differences in

preference regarding the author’s presence can be observed: the English

originals exhibit different tendencies than the Slovene originals and their

English translations reveal.

In the English originals, inanimate subjects were used in just over half of

the thesis statements, and personal subjects and the passive voice were

each used in approximately one quarter of the thesis statements. In the

Slovene originals and their English translations, however, inanimate and

personal subjects were used with a similar frequency, and the use of the

passive voice was quite restricted. The examples below show instances of

the different degrees of authorial presence from all three subcorpora.

Examples 3, 4, 5a, and 5b illustrate the use of the personal subject in

thesis statements, 3 and 4 are from original English research articles, and

5a and 5b are a Slovene original and its translation.

(3) In this paper we examine the place-based theory of environmental evaluation and

its major supposition, the concept of geographic discounting, using survey data

collected from individuals living in communities near the Chugach National Forest

in Alaska (USA).

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(4) In this paper we report on research aimed at developing a set of methods

designed to assist road departments in rural jurisdictions mitigate hazards along

roads under their management.

(5a) V članku predstavljamo erozijo prsti v Sloveniji, posebej pa meritve erozije,

opravljene na njivi v porečju Besnice severozahodno od Kranja.

(5b) In this article we present soil erosion in Slovenia, particularly measurements of

erosion taken on a field in the Besnica Valley northwest of Kranj.

Examples 6, 7, 8a, and 8b illustrate the use of the passive voice in thesis

statements; 6 and 7 are from original English research articles, and 8a

and 8b are a Slovene original and its translation.

(6) In this paper, it is argued that different understandings of the meaning of ‘home’

form an important context for the difficulties that have been faced by policy-

makers in responding to the Bosnian emergency since 1995.

(7) In this paper, the small catchment of Hey Clough and its environs is described.

(8a) V tem prispevku so predstavljene osnovne značilnosti kamnin, reliefa, prsti in

rastja Dobrepoljsko-Struškega krasa.

(8b) In this study, the basic characteristics of the rock, relief, soil, and vegetation of

the Dobrepolje-Struge karst are presented.

Examples 9, 10, 11a, and 11b illustrate the use of the inanimate subject

in thesis statements; 9 and 10 are from original English research articles,

and 11a and 11b are a Slovene original and its translation.

(9) This paper presents results on estimated changes in soil C stocks over the period

1939–2000 using the Land Utilization Survey (LUS) of 1938/1939 and LANDSAT

TM satellite imagery of 1990 and 1999/2000, in combination with soil maps and

data from the NI Soil Survey.

(10) Using basic techniques derived from Crime Pattern Analysis, this paper seeks to

demonstrate how particular variables relating to where and when violent crime

occurs are valuable in identifying the geography of city-centre violent crime.

(11a) Članek obravnava vzroke in posledice visokih vod novembra leta 2000 na območju

naselij Bač, Knežak in Koritnice v občini Ilirska Bistrica.

(11b) The article discusses the reasons and consequences of high waters in November

2000 in the region of the settlements Bač, Knežak and Koritnice in the

municipality of Ilirska Bistrica.

These results may seem to suggest that the more frequent use of the

personal subject in the Slovene originals and their translations (compared

to the English originals) indicates that the Slovene authors wished to

promote themselves and their role in their work in the thesis statements,

and that the translations attempted to capture this. However, a closer

examination of the individual thesis statements reveals that this is

probably not be the case at all. In fact, it seems that the ratio of the three

authorial-presence categories in Slovene and English may to some extent

The Journal of Specialised Translation Issue 10 - July 2008

reflect the general characteristics of the two languages. The limited use of

the passive voice in the Slovene originals seems to reflect a systemic

difference between English and Slovene: in Slovene, the use of the

passive voice is more restricted in general (Blaganje & Konte 1998: 295,

302) and the structure itself appears to be considered stylistically

inappropriate. In addition to this, the tendency to use the first person

plural to indicate that the author does not wish to promote him or herself

personally (the so-called pluralis modestiae) is a traditional convention in

Slovene academic writing (for an in-depth discussion on the rhetorical

conventions and the authorial presentation in scientific texts in Slavic

languages, see Čmejrková, 2007). The fact that the active voice is

retained in all the translations in which it was used in the Slovene originals

is a sign of the general tendency observed in the ACTA-E subcorpus to

keep as close to the original as possible.

So far, the results of the analysis have shown a preference for a close

correspondence between the original and the translated version of thesis

statements: a closer examination of the individual pairs of the Slovene

originals and their English translations, however, reveals that the precise

realisations are literal translations in half of all the cases. In the remaining

eight cases, changes which could generally be described as improvements

in terms of TL conventions were observed. Three types of differences

between the original and the translation were identified. In one example,

the content of the thesis statement in the translation is different from that

of the original thesis statement. Thus, the thesis statement in the Slovene

original states that the paper is composed of two parts and that the first

part is an attempt to establish certain geographical-developmental factors,

and so on. It then goes on to state the content of the second part. In the

English translation (example 12), however, the thesis statement is

simplified and the content of the first part of the paper is expressed as the

main goal of the paper:

(12) This article is an attempt to identify some geographical-developmental factors . . .

Three cases involve a change in the choice of tense. In two of the Slovene

articles, the thesis statement is expressed in the future tense and in one

in the past tense; all three English translations, however, are in the

present tense. Examples 13a–c below illustrate this change (13a is the

original thesis statement, 13b its literal translation, and 13c the

translation which was actually used):

(13a) V članku smo pozornost namenili...

(13b) In the article, we focused on...

(13c) In this article, we focus on...

In half of the instances, the only difference was in the exact wording. In

some cases, the choice seems an arbitrary one. In others, the word order

of the two language is generally different and this was reflected in the

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word order of the thesis statement, and in some cases the original itself

was relatively clumsy or it involved structures not typical of the thesis

statement, and the translations tried to improve the style. Examples 14a–

c below illustrate this point (14a is the original thesis statement, 14b the

literal translation, and 14c the translation which was actually used):

(14a) Pričujoči članek želi prikazati...

(14b) The present article wishes to present...

(14c) This article presents...

In the 16 Slovene thesis statements, the combination of wish + to present

(želeti + prikazati) occurs in four instances, which suggests that this may

be one of the more common ways of expressing the thesis statement in

Slovene geography research articles. No combinations with wish occurred

in the 25 original English thesis statements. It also seems that, in English,

the combination of an inanimate subject (e.g., the article) with a verb of

volition, such as wish, is awkward. Combinations of an inanimate subject

(e.g., this paper) and a verb such as seek or attempt, however, express a

similar idea in a more conventional manner.

7. Conclusion

The principal aim of this paper was to examine the issues arising in the

translation of research articles from Slovene into English related to the

thesis statement. The analysis was based on the hypothesis that there

may be considerable differences in thesis-statement use and form

between the two languages which could lead to problems in translation.

The findings of the analysis confirmed the original hypothesis: it was

established that there are in fact substantial differences in the frequency

of thesis-statement use in the Slovene originals and English originals; this

difference, however, was not reflected in the English translations of the

Slovene originals. Differences were also observed between the two sets of

originals in terms of thesis-statement position and form: in both respects,

the English translations corresponded to the Slovene originals. A further

comparison of the thesis statements identified in the Slovene originals and

their English translations showed that literal translation was used in half of

the cases, and changes which could generally be described as

improvements in terms of TL conventions were observed in the other half.

Because the thesis statement can be interpreted as an aspect of reader-

oriented writing, the findings of the analysis presented here support the

results of previews research (Pisanski Peterlin, 2005), which showed that

Slovene academic writing is in general somewhat less reader-oriented

than English academic writing and most probably follows its own conventions,

typical of this genre in Slovene. This suggests that complex issues may arise

in translating academic discourse between the two languages: the

differences in rhetorical conventions may lead to translations which fail to

conform to TL conventions.

The Journal of Specialised Translation Issue 10 - July 2008

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Biography

Agnes Pisanski Peterlin works at the Department of Translation, Faculty of

Arts, University of Ljubljana. In 2006 she received her PhD in Linguistics

from the University of Ljubljana. Her research interests include contrastive

rhetoric, translation of texts for specific purposes and discourse analysis.

She can be reached at [email protected].