The Linguist

Chartered Institute of Linguists SPRING 2025 The Linguist 25 FEATURES We are expected to be epistemically virtuous, as this is conducive to knowledge, and thus to truth. 4 Epistemic virtues include open-mindedness, inquisitiveness, courage, carefulness, perseverance, academic integrity, intellectual humility and fairness. 5 For instance, a member of academia is expected to welcome views challenging their intellectual stance, and to be inquisitive and courageous in challenging others' intellectual positions. On the flipside, we should refrain from epistemic vices: "intellectual pride, negligence, idleness, cowardice, conformity, carelessness, rigidity, prejudice, wishful thinking, closed-mindedness, insensitivity to detail, obtuseness, and lack of thoroughness". 6 Such vices pose serious threats to existing knowledge. Culprits are "intellectually lazy", "incurious about topics about which they ought to have an interest" and "lacking in conscientiousness when dealing with evidence". 7 Pseudo-translators, for example, take shortcuts to avail themselves of a source text instead of taking the more arduous interlingual and intertextual path to academic writing. They should refer to the original and translate it if they have command of the language. Alternatively, they could ask a colleague to translate it or commission a professional translation. If it is necessary to use a previous translation, its accuracy should at least be verified, either by comparing it with other translations or by asking someone who knows the languages to check it, and credit should be given to its renderer. Epistemic laziness may lead to instances where available academic knowledge is distorted through translation – as in the proto-translation T1999M (see graph, left). Pseudo-retranslations may further mar the meaning and facilitate the propagation of flawed pieces of knowledge. Seemingly unconcerned with accuracy, pseudo-retranslators do not refer back to the source but pretend to have translated from it with a referential mention. This results in the fallacy that the meaning was produced by the original author. In the graph, all three pseudo-retranslators purport to have referred to the American Psychological Association, but the recurring errors suggest they did not. The lack of curiosity about the accuracy of the presented knowledge in a pre-existing translation might cause a degradation of academic knowledge. This issue may lead to a corrupted academic ecosystem, where trust in scholarship is eroded, inaccurate scholarly information is traded, lines of textual interdependency are blurred, academic codes of behaviour are discounted, academic integrity is compromised, and academic/ professional aptness is undermined. Pseudo-retranslation is difficult to identify and is hardly suspected because it is almost always accompanied by an in-text reference. To preclude pseudo-retranslations from happening, a couple of preventive and corrective measures can be taken. Education is key, because I suggest that linguistic incompetence is among the primary factors. Academic authors should be informed of the existence of pseudo-retranslation and its detriment to scholarly knowledge. During training, researchers should learn how to observe the conventions of proper crediting and take a sceptical approach to previously generated academic knowledge. Moreover, they should be informed of the probable dangers of wanton text appropriations, such as pseudo-retranslations. Some institutional precautions can also be adopted. Among them are scrupulous editorial oversight, where software-produced similarity rates are rigorously studied with attention to translation accuracy, authors are instantly warned of instances of pseudo- retranslation when detected, and if persistent, misappropriations are sonorously disclosed and the authors' affiliated bodies are informed. Notes 1 Yildiz, M (2024) Pseudo-Retranslation, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 66 2 The (pseudo-re)translations in the corpus are in Turkish but they are back-translated into English in the graph. 3 Dougherty, MV (2024) New Techniques for Proving Plagiarism: Case studies from the Sacred Disciplines at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Leiden and Boston: Brill 4 Pritchard, D (2024) What Is This Thing Called Knowledge?, London and New York: Routledge; and Fricker, M (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing, Oxford: OUP 5 Watson, L (2020) 'Educating for Good Questioning as a Democratic Skill'. In Fricker, M et al, The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, New York and London: Routledge, 437-446; Zagzebski, L and DePaul, M (2003) 'Introduction'. In DePaul, M and Zagzebski, L, Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from ethics and epistemology, Oxford: OUP, 1-12 6 Zagzebski, L (1996) Virtues of the Mind: An inquiry into the nature of virtue and the ethical foundations of knowledge, Cambridge: CUP, 15 7 Op. cit. Pritchard, 162-173 © SHUTTERSTOCK

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