Oldenburg and de la Roque, 1675–1677. Building on a Firm Foundation

During the fairly short period when Oldenburg was still editing the Philosophical Transactions and de la Roque was editor of the Journal des Sçavans, eight translations appeared in the English journal, one of which was a combination of two source texts. The analysis shows that six of the eight translations have a smaller number of paragraphs and clauses than the source text. Material is marginally the most frequent process type in the Journal des Sçavans, while relational is marginally the most frequent type in the Philosophical Transactions. Over half of the themes in both refer to the object of study. Modality in the French texts tends to be dynamic, while the translations tend to be epistemic. Roughly three-quarters of the nominalized processes encode material process. The slight differences between the source texts and translations would tend to indicate that the translator is attempting to cater for a more specialized readership.