Popular science articles in broadsheet newspapers, consumer magazines, and specialized magazines: Engagement resources from a translation perspective

The chapter offers a contribution to the field of popular science journalism from a linguistic and translational perspective. There is a specific focus on the feature article, translated from a wide range of written media, from broadsheet newspapers to consumer magazines and specialized science magazines. The aim of this contribution is to explore the issues of subjectivity and dialogism in popular science texts as conveyed by evaluative linguistic choices. This will be done through the illustration of a case study dealing with translations from English to Italian. A systematic approach will be offered by applying Appraisal Theory (Martin & White 2005) and, more specifically, by applying the resources of the ‘attendant’ system of Engagement, which “position[s] the speaker/writer with respect to the value position being advanced and with respect to potential responses to that value position” (Martin & White 2005: 36). The purpose of the chapter is to give account of any ‘shifts’ in the translation of Engagement resources and to see (1) whether these shifts can be linked to different degrees of popularization in the Source Texts, (2) whether they can be related to different communicative preferences in the two ‘linguacultures’ (English/American and Italian), and (3) to what extent they may affect the cultural process of “democratization of knowledge”, which has been taking place in the UK and the US in the past 20 years (Kranich et al. 2012: 332) and which has more recently also affected Italy.