Case Study 2: Pseudo-retranslation and “Constructivism”

This chapter features the analysis of the second corpus, comprising one assumed translation of Brooks and Brooks’ five guiding principles of constructivism (1993; 1999) and its 23 pseudo-retranslations. The corpus comprises nine master’s theses, six books, four articles, three doctoral dissertations, one book chapter, and one conference paper—all in education sciences. The chapter attempts to reveal how the so-called Matthew Effect (i.e., the preferential treatment afforded to a reputedly leading scholars) and co-citation facilitate the dissemination of knowledge distorted first through translation and then pseudo-retranslations. It is concluded that scholars are attracted to the translations of “reputable” authors without questioning the accuracy of their translations and that such influential authors’ co-cited works aggravate the epistemic pollution of an academic system.