10:08 Sep 12, 2008 

You seem now to be into the realms of meta-language, i.e. the term itself is the subject of the text. To my mind, this strengthens the case for treating the term throughout as a label for the francophone politico-social phenomenon in particular (your author seems clearly to be aligning her/his use of the term with all the connotations it has in the French context, rather than the less specific use it would have if discussing developments in Turkey, for instance). That being the case, I would certainly lean towards using the source term, with a translator's note (not footnote) in your (not the original) introduction: exact format to be agreed with editor, or follow existing examples from target journal if available.

09:20 Sep 12, 2008 

Having got to the end of the translation, I now have two further pieces of information which add to the challenge of how to deal with the terms "laïcité" and "laïc":

1. The text talks about the polysemy of the word "laïcité", and specifically refers to the fact that it has no direct equivalent in other languages:

"A la polysémie s’ajoute l’impossibilité de traduire le mot-concept dans d’autres langues, que ce soit l’anglais, le néerlandais ou l’allemand : 'secularism', 'vrijzinnigheid' ou 'weltlichkeit' utilisés souvent comme équivalents n’ont pas la même signification."

2. It uses the words "laïcité/sécularité" and "laïc/séculaire" together - here are two examples:

"Les démocraties européennes ont connu, ces dernières années écrit-elle, l’émergence d’une « laïcité-sécularité » qui relativise considérablement le cas français."

"Cette société laïque séculière doit-elle redéfinir, et si oui comment, la place et le rôle de la religion dans la vie publique face à l’affirmation religieuse des populations issues de l’immigration et devenues citoyennes à part entière des États où elles vivent ?"

In light of the above, my original idea of using "secularity" with an explanatory footnote no longer seems an adequate solution. Martin and Helen suggested leaving the term(s) in FR and explaining the linguistic difficulty in a footnote, but something in me doesn't like this idea - surely a lengthy text containing multiple occurrences of a foreign word, even if explained in an early footnote, makes life difficult for the reader?

I'm genuinely stuck as to how best to deal with this. Help!

17:58 Sep 10, 2008 

Thanks, Martin, for taking the time to do that bit of very instructive research. Well, well. I stand corrected.

17:53 Sep 10, 2008 

Rob, I didn't feel your assertion was right that "secularity" was so uncommon that you should hesitate to use it, so I did a quick check:

"secularity" gets 148 pages of results on bbc.co.uk
"secularism" gets 13 pages of results
"laicity" gets 1 page (2 results, both in reader contributions)

16:03 Sep 10, 2008 

The solution you propose re selection of target term is fine, too, in principle - essentially it is about clarity for the reader. Definition of terms is very much an academic pursuit, obviously, so if you contribute to that and precipitate clarity, I should think that most academics would be grateful for that. But I do also agree with Martin about trying to find one term, though I am sure your context will best dictate what needs explaining and what your approach should be. I prefer secularity to laicity, if only because it gives the reader some chance of comprehension without note needed, but if laicity is indeed becoming the standard term then I guess we have to live with that, though no harm in adding a note, even if only to the author to explain the term's relative unfamiliarity to EN readers.

14:48 Sep 10, 2008 

Rob Grayson: 1:22pm Sep 10, 2008: More information... - To add to the debate, I've just found this on the Wikipedia entry for "secularity":

Laïcité is a French concept related to the separation of state and religion, sometimes rendered by the English cognate neologism laicity and also translated by the words secularity and secularization. The word laïcité is sometimes characterized as having no exact English equivalent; it is similar to the more moderate definition of secularism, but is not as ambiguous as that word.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularity)
Helen Shiner: 1:42pm Sep 10, 2008: I absolutely see your problem but think the best way around it might be to add a translator's note at the start indicating the specificity of the FR term. That is what I would do anyhow.
Rob Grayson: 1:45pm Sep 10, 2008: Hi Helen, that may actually be a very good idea... Why don't you post it in an answer and see who agrees?

14:15 Sep 10, 2008 

I fear you might run into problems over sentence construction if you tried to stick too strictly to a one-term equivalence. At the very least you would need to explain "laïque" also, so that you could use it in the translation alongside "laïcité", for example in the second sentence which you quoted.

14:05 Sep 10, 2008 

Your comments are useful, Helen. The problem is that it is not always clear from the context on which occasions the meaning is "more accepted/general". In terms of translation practice for academic papers, is it not acceptable to do as I suggested - i.e. choose a specific target term but explain on first occurrence the underlying source term?

14:01 Sep 10, 2008 

Whoops

14:00 Sep 10, 2008 

I translate academic work at the time, and I think it is acceptable to insert a translator's note whether or not the paper is historic in intent. The point here is that language is being created, or at least a subtle new meaning is. I agree with Martin that the rentention in the text of the FR term in the instances where you have scruples would be the way forward. It would then give you scope to use secularism etc. where the meaning is more accepted/general.

13:57 Sep 10, 2008 

I would do what Martin suggested, if this wasn't about Belgium. Whose laïcité I am totally ignorant about.

13:55 Sep 10, 2008 

What about adding a TN on first occurrence of the term, and explaining in the TN that wherever the term is found in the original text, it is rendered "secularity" or whatever in the translation? (As you can tell, academic papers are something that I only translate from time to time.)

13:51 Sep 10, 2008 

I agree essentially with Helen that it in an academic paper it is acceptable and often helpful to explain and 'position' subject-specific terms with a translator's note. In this case I would always retain the term in its original form i.e. "laïcité", in the body of the article.

That said, however, I think that option would apply more to an historical article on la laïcité in France, where the term is a specific label; in your present case the term seems to be half-way between that and the generalised concept.