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This master’s thesis encompasses a commented translation of the first chapter of Steven Strogatz’s book Infinite Powers. In it, we will first delve into the object of the translation. We will discuss the author of the book, its main subject, the audience which it addresses and the purposes of the author’s writing efforts. After we have established the most important characteristics of the source text, we browse the existing literature for an appropriate perspective on the translation at hand. We look into the developments of the scientific field of translation studies to find out what constitutes a ‘good’ translation. Next, we explore the literature on Language for Specific Purposes, more specifically those sources which connect that field of study with translation. Finally, we examine the canonical properties of non-specialist scientific texts by combing through the advice provided by writing teachers and academics. Building on our findings we propose a theoretical framework which serves to guide our decision-making. We define which aspects of the source text will be transferred to the target text, determining what is the most appropriate type of translation in our case. Based on that starting point, we install three global parameters which, together, assess the suitability of a translation in a certain context. We do note, however, that this framework is not an objective, mathematical manner to evaluate the translation decisions we make; the parameters provide us with general guidelines on what is to be considered when choosing between two or more alternatives. In the final chapter, we analyse the completed translation in its entirety. We start by discussing the challenges involving the mathematical and quantum mechanical terminology contained in the source text, followed by a list of non-scientific lexical items which proved difficult to translate. Next, we reviewed a number of discrepancies between the source and target cultures which led to concrete translation problems. Another aspect to be tackled were the stylistics: we gave examples of contexts in which literary devices were preserved, compensated or even added. After that, we explained the choices we made pertaining the typography of the translation, which comprises the interpunction as well as the visual composition of the text. Finally, we enlisted the adaptations we inserted into the text. For each parameter we defined in the previous chapter, we provide examples of omissions, additions, paraphrases, and other possible changes made. Following the body text, we provide the reader with a conclusion and three attachments: the full translation of the first chapter of Infinite Powers from English into Dutch, the list of mathematical terms, and the list of quantum mechanical terms.

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The starting point of this master's thesis is best explained with an example. Mathematics as an English term comes from the Latin ars mathematica. The French refer to mathématiques and the German use Mathematik. People from the Netherlands and the Flemish part of Belgium who speak the Dutch language, however, use wiskunde for the same concept. The Dutch language doesn’t seem to use scientific words with a Latin origin as frequently as compared to other European languages. To explain why the Dutch language is a bit of an outsider in this field, we will have to take a closer look at what happened during the renaissance period and especially what the scientist Simon Stevin has realized. The renaissance was a period that was characterized by great changes on a political, economical, cultural and scientific level. During that period scientists started to develop new ways of research based on knowledge from the ancient classics. Simon Stevin was one of those scientists who advanced the subjects of mathematics and statics substantially. Stevin also had a great interest in language. As a scholar of the renaissance, he was greatly influenced by the purism movement of the time. Stevin attached great importance to language. He believed that the Dutch language was an ideal language to convey scientiefic knowledge in a clear way to people who could not understand Latin, the academic language up till then. Stevin was adamant in his purpose and wrote most of his theoretical works in Dutch. Not only did he help spreading Dutch scientific terminology, he also invented new words for new sciences that were developing at the time. To the present day we can still observe many Dutch words in scientific texts where other European languages use terms rooted in the classical languages. This thesis therefore concerns a study of specific terminology, with the main focus on uncovering the possible impact of Stevin on the current Dutch scientific language. This is done by sampling from Stevin’s original works, most of which are available from the Principal works of Simon Stevin. The corpus sample consists up to 300 words. Based on the comparison of the current Dutch term with its foreign equivalent and with Stevin’s terminology, the terminology is categorized into different groups and is available for consultation in the appendix of this dissertation. The classification supposes that Stevin is accountable for 48% of the current Dutch terminology. Moreover, of the total amount of terms 46% is still pure Dutch terminology and 41% of the corpus has both a Dutch term as well as a foreign term. This stands in contrast with only 13% of the terms which only have a foreign term. That means that the Dutch language, regardless whether the term comes from Stevin, is still very well represented in the field of science. A qualitative analysis, however, shows that his influence goes beyond this clear and strict classification. Therefore, this research concludes by saying that Stevin’s impact on the Dutch language counts for at least 48% of the scientific Dutch language and that Dutch scientific terminology is used at an incidence of 46% to 87% based on this sampled corpus.