Let Us Talk About Sugar

Abstract

This article explores the idea of simplicity from three different angles: translate-simplify, write-simplify and teach-simplify. It is a practice-based rather than desk-top research. One specific tutorial is chosen to illustrate the pedagogy adopted on the subject which blends translation studies and comparative literature. The title of this presentation has been borrowed from a popular brochure Your Health Your Pharmacy (2022). One of its articles advertises the replacement or reduction of sugar by maple syrup in people’s daily intakes. This text is used in my practical translation classes at UCL where I teach technical, scientific and medical translation modules to Master students who specialise in translation from English into Russian. The popular style of this publication is chosen to discuss the issues of simplicity and clarity in translation. For example, examining the idea of maple syrup as an attractive, all-natural sugar alternative is a good start for developing the students’ understanding of topics related to language for specific purposes and various readerships. Our closer look at the source text has provided unexpected results which lead to an unusual conclusion that “Perhaps the All-There-Is is not all there is” (Popova, 2014). This gives me an opportunity to talk about The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the All- There-Is (2014). The story is written by Roberto Trotta, my former colleague from Imperial College London. It exemplifies and highlights important issues in today’s popular semi-specialised writing, in particular the use of the 1,000 most common English words without compromising on clarity and depth of scientific descriptions related to astronomy and cosmology. Trotta’s methodology is further examined in the field of translation. The focus is on checking the students’ translation of Let’s Talk About Sugar (2022) in which the key role of popular terminology is underlined.