Reflections on Scientific Term Translation: The Case Study of “Evolution”

In translating scientific terms, in addition to paying attention to etymology, two points should be considered. First, some theoretical terms directly or indirectly carry the metaphorical burden of words from the society in which the theory is formed. Second, some of the key theoretical terms in scientific theories form an intertwined conceptual network. Therefore, for each term of this network, other entwined terms must be considered. This makes the philosophy of science also play an important role in such translations. In this article, we turn to the theory of evolution, and to demonstrate that scientific terms make sense in their historical context, we will refer to the social and political context of the emergence of the evolutionary theory in the West. We refer in more detail to some of the political, religious, and social ideas of the emergence of the theory among the Arabs, the Ottoman Turks, and the Iranians, which may have influenced the finding of a suitable translation for “evolution”. The structure of the article is such that we will first briefly point to the cognitive significance of the terms. Then, a history of the proposed translations for “evolution” among the Arabs, the Ottoman Turks, and finally among the Persians will be interduced. The next section outlines the most common reasons given by fans of each translation for their choice. We then engage in a philosophical discussion of the concept of “evolution” in the current texts of biology and philosophy of biology. We will see that there has been disagreement among the twentieth century’s biologists to whether or not the evolutionary process is directional. Part of this disagreement can be traced back to the ambiguity in Darwin's own writings; but apart from how Darwin thought about it, there is still a debate among biologists about the directionality of the evolutionary process. In the penultimate section, we point out a few other concepts in theory and show that our interpretation of these concepts can affect our interpretation on the directionality of the evolutionary process, and thus affect our choice in translation. In the final section, a proposal for this type of research is presented.