nth Times Removed from Truth: Academic Knowledge Distorted through Indirect Translation and Pseudo-Retranslation

New Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies 2026, Tarragona, İspanya, 25 - 27 Haziran 2026, ss.43, (Özet Bildiri)

Academic knowledge is a collective and accumulative construct, demanding not only rigorous

citation but epistemic diligence to prevent distortion of knowledge during intertextual migration.

This study examines a case where authors both fail to credit a proto-text and compromise the

knowledge therein. The corpus comprises the English original of Kirk’s (1962) seminal 44-word

definition of learning disability, its Spanish translation (G1995B), the Portuguese translation

(G1998B) of G1995B, and 15 pseudo-retranslations of G1998B. Despite the brevity of the analyzed

materials, the data were judged to have reached a saturation for a qualitative and quantitative

analysis. Qualitative comparisons were performed manually. For quantitative analyses, R was

employed to calculate intertextual similarity rates, ranging from 0.00 (no match) to 1.00 (perfect

match), and to generate similarity-based network graphs. Results demonstrate that the academic

knowledge in English was incrementally distorted as it was moved from G1995B (Spanish) to the

most recent pseudo-retranslation P2024A (Portuguese). Notably, the 16 Portuguese extracts share

similarity rates between 0.83 to 1.00, and a 0.97 similarity between G1998B and C2020M_KG

suggests that the distorted knowledge in G1998B remained dormant for 22 years before

reappearing.