169 ARTICLES
2021, Vol. 18 (1), 169-186(222)
revije.ff.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.18.1.169-186
UDC: 81'255:001.4
Tadej Pahor
Martina Smodiš
Agnes Pisanski Peterlin
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations 
of Research Article Abstracts
ABSTRACT
In multilingual settings, the abstract is the only part of the research article that is regularly 
translated. Although very brief, abstracts play an important role in academic communication, 
as they provide immediate access to research findings. Contrastive research has revealed 
considerable cross-linguistic differences in the rhetorical patterns of abstracts. The present 
paper focuses on how this variation is bridged in translation, by addressing an important 
rhetorical dimension of academic discourse, authorial presence. Specifically, it examines how 
authorial presence is reshaped in translated abstracts. An analysis of a small corpus of 150 
Slovene research article abstracts from five disciplines and their English translations reveals 
several interesting types of recurring translators’ interventions, most notably the tendency to 
replace personal authorial references with impersonal structures. Data collected in interviews 
with four experienced translators of academic texts is used to shed light on potential reasons 
for interventions with authorial presence in translation.  
Keywords: academic discourse, authorial presence, corpus analysis, interview study, 
translation of abstracts
Preoblikovanje avtorjeve prisotnosti v prevodih 
izvlečkov znanstvenih člankov
IZVLEČEK
V večjezičnih oko ljih je izvleček edini del znanstvenega članka, ki se ga redno prevaja. Čeprav 
so zelo kratki, imajo izvlečki pomembno vlogo v akademski komunikaciji, saj omogočajo 
takojšen dostop do izsledkov raziskav. Kontrastivne raziskave so identificirale precejšnje 
medjezikovne razlike v retoričnih vzorcih izvlečkov. Pričujoči prispevek se osredotoča na 
to, kako se tovrstne razlike premostijo v prevodu, in sicer na primeru pomembne retorične 
dimenzije akademskega diskurza, to je avtorjeve prisotnosti v besedilu. Prispevek se ukvarja 
z vprašanjem, kako se prisotnost avtorja preobrazi v prevedenih izvlečkih. Analiza majhnega 
korpusa 150 slovenskih izvlečkov znanstvenih člankov iz petih različnih strok in pripadajočih 
angleških prevodov pokaže nekaj zanimivih ponavljajočih se posegov prevajalcev, med 
katerimi je najpomembnejša zamenjava osebnih referenc na avtorja z neosebnimi strukturami. 
Podatki, pridobljeni v intervjujih s štirimi izkušenimi prevajalci akademskega diskurza, 
osvetlijo potencialne razloge za posege v avtorjevo prisotnost v prevodu.
Ključne besede: akademski diskurz, avtorjeva prisotnost, korpusna analiza, študija na podlagi 
intervjujev, prevajanje izvlečkov

170 T . Pahor, M. Smodiš, A. Pisanski Peterlin Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts
1 Introduction
Research article abstracts (RAAs) are frequently translated in multilingual contexts, where 
the source and target texts are published side-by-side. T ranslation of RAAs is typically carried 
out for two reasons: to increase the international visibility of local research, or to foster 
multilingualism in an increasingly monolingual world (cf. Morley and Kerans 2013). As a 
genre, RAAs perform a key function in academic communication, since they are, as Lorés-
Sanz (2016, 133) points out, “a navigating tool, an essential time-saving and information-
managing device”. Hyland (2003, 258) underlines the importance of the genre because “after 
the title, it is generally the readers’ first encounter with a text and the point where they decide 
whether to read on and give the accompanying paper further attention, or to ignore it”. 
Juxtaposing them with research articles, Hyland (2003, 258) furthermore identifies the most 
critical function of RAAs, which is to “persuade readers that the article is worth reading”. 
Nevertheless, their translation remains surprisingly under-researched, although a few studies 
on translation of academic abstracts (Van Bonn and Swales 2007; Perales-Escudero and 
Swales 2011 ; Alharbi and Swales 2011; Lorés-Sanz 2016) have shown considerable shifts in 
rhetorical patterns in translation. This corresponds to the findings of research into translation 
of other academic genres from Slovene, a peripheral language, into English, the academic 
lingua franca (see Paradiž 2020 for research grant proposals; Pisanski Peterlin 2016 for 
research articles), where rhetorical divergences between the source and target texts have been 
identified above all in terms of the author-audience interaction.
The aim of this paper is to investigate how authorial presence as an element of the author-
audience relationship is transformed and reconstructed in translation of academic discourse. 
Using a corpus of Slovene RAAs and their English translations, and semi-structured interviews, 
this study examines the translation strategies used in translating authorial references from 
Slovene into English. In particular, the study addresses the following research questions:
1. How is the authorial voice in translated English abstracts different from that in original 
Slovene abstracts?
2. What kind of shifts can be identified in translation in different disciplines?
3. What are the translators’ reasons for the shifts?
2 Authorial Presence
Over the past few decades, a substantial body of research into the construction of authorial 
presence in academic discourse has revealed the complexities associated with its discourse 
functions (Ivanić 1998; Tang and John 1999; Kuo 1999; Hyland 2001, 2002; Taylor and 
Goodall 2019 ), as well as variation in authorial presence across languages (Vassileva 1998; 
Breivega, Dahl, and Fløttum 2002; Mur Dueñas 2007; Molino 2010; Dontcheva-Navratilova 
2013; Walková 2018 ), genres and disciplines ( Breivega, Dahl, and Fløttum 2002; Seoane and 
Hundt 2018; Cheung and Lau 2020 ). While academic writing has traditionally been viewed 
as distant and impersonal to avoid associations with subjectivity (Lafuente Millán 2010, 36; 
Hyland 2001, 207–8), a number of studies have shown that personal authorial references are 
actually an important element of academic communication. In fact, Hyland (2002, 1091) 
T. Pahor, M. 
Smodiš, A. 
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identifies “the ability of the writer to construct a credible representation of themselves and 
their work, aligning themselves with the socially shaped identities of their communities” as a 
key element of pragmatic competence.
To shed light on how authors use authorial references to draw attention to themselves or to 
obscure their presence, several researchers have attempted to classify the discourse functions 
of authorial presence in various academic genres. The proposed classifications vary depending 
on how broadly authorial presence is defined. Thus Tang and John’s (1999) classification 
covers both inclusive (i.e., referring to the author and the audience) and exclusive (referring 
to the author only) uses of personal authorial expressions. On the other hand, Hyland’s 
(2003) classification, developed using a sample of 80 research articles and 800 RAAs from 
eight different disciplines, is limited to exclusive use, distinguishing between the following 
discourse functions: explaining a procedure, stating results or claim, elaborating an argument, 
and stating a goal/purpose.
It is not surprising that a considerable amount of detailed information obtained through 
empirical research on the role of authorial identity is available for academic writing in English 
in general and for English RAAs in particular, as English is the indisputable global lingua franca 
of academic communication. Thus Hyland’s (2003, 257–58) juxtaposition of the frequencies 
of use of the discourse functions of authorial presence in two genres, research articles and 
RAAs, reveals that abstracts follow very specific rhetorical conventions of their own. In RAAs, 
the most frequently used function of authorial presence was s tating results or claim, followed 
by stating a goal/purpose and elaborating an argument, while explaining a procedure was the 
least frequent function. Moreover, Hyland’s comprehensive corpus studies of academic writing 
have revealed variations in the expression of authorial presence among different disciplines, 
with personal authorial references being typically more frequent in the soft fields, i.e., the 
humanities and social sciences, than in the hard sciences, i.e., science and engineering (Hyland 
2001, 2003). Moreover, considerable variation in the preferred forms of authorial presence was 
also identified: Hyland’s (2003) analysis shows that self-mentions in the singular are relatively 
rarely used in abstracts from the hard sciences compared to self-mentions in the plural form; 
in RAAs in the soft disciplines, on the other hand, self-mentions in the singular occurred 
somewhat more frequently than self-mentions in the plural. This difference is partly attributed 
to the fact that most texts in the hard sciences are multi-authored.
Much less empirical data on this topic is available for other languages, and often the main source 
of information for the preferred expressions of authorial voice may be language-specific style 
guides. However, a number of contrastive studies have contributed to a better understanding 
of how authorial identity is shaped across lingua-cultures. Vassileva’s (1998) influential study 
contrasting authorial presence in linguistics research articles across five languages identified 
some fundamental differences among English, German, French, Russian and Bulgarian, which 
have been further explored in subsequent research. Vassileva (1998) showed that while both the 
first person singular and plural were used to express authorial presence in English and German 
texts, Russian and Bulgarian texts relied almost exclusively on the plural, and in French texts 
personal authorial references were relatively rare. Subsequent contrastive studies juxtaposing 
English and Romance languages revealed similar tendencies: Molino’s (2010) analysis showed 

172 T . Pahor, M. Smodiš, A. Pisanski Peterlin Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts
that personal authorial references were used less frequently in linguistics research articles in 
Italian than in English, while Mur Dueñas (2007) reported a less frequent use of self-mentions 
in Spanish business management research articles than in English.
Research focusing on Slavic languages has, on the other hand, confirmed the preference for 
the plural form in expressing authorial identity (cf., for instance, Čmejrková 2007a for Czech; 
Bašić and Veselica-Majhut 2016 for Croatian; Walková 2018 for Slovak ), which Čmejrková 
(2007b, 97) attributes to the influence of the Latin rhetorical tradition of using pluralis 
modestiae for self-presentation. Nevertheless, Čmejrková (2007b, 97) also highlights that the 
singular is increasingly gaining ground in Czech and Slovak academic writing due to the 
growing influence of English. It is important to note, however, that substantial divergences 
between the conventions of Slavic languages have also been identified in contrastive research. 
Balažic Bulc’s (2020) corpus study of 160 RAAs in Slovene and Croatian from a range of 
different disciplines identifies pronounced differences between the two languages in terms 
of the frequency of self-mentions across the different fields, a striking finding given the 
systemic similarities between the two languages and the shared history of the lingua-cultures. 
Surprisingly, Balažic Bulc’s (2020) results for interdisciplinary differences among Slovene 
research articles also show that personal authorial references occur most frequently in the 
natural sciences, somewhat less frequently in technology and social sciences and relatively 
infrequently in the humanities. Finally, Balažic Bulc’s (2020) data also reveals the first person 
plural verb as the most frequent form of self-mention in both Slovene and Croatian.
Descriptions of Slovene also suggest that the first person plural is the traditionally preferred 
form of expressing the authorial voice in academic discourse. Toporišič (2004, 390) claims 
that the first person plural form can replace the singular to avoid highlighting the doer of the 
action, pointing out that this is used by some scientists, although he considers this type of use 
to be old-fashioned. Hladnik’s (2002) online edition of his seminal style guide for Slovene 
underscores a simple, neutral, comprehensible style as the basic convention of Slovene 
academic writing. The first person plural is proposed as the norm for academic writing, since 
it includes both the writer and the reader; although the first person singular form is also 
recommended as the preferred form in the exclusive use (when the reference is to the author 
only) to avoid the awkward connotation of the pluralis maiestatis and glorification of the 
writer. Furthermore, Hladnik (2002) also discusses the use of two impersonal alternatives to 
personal authorial references, i.e., the passive voice and nominalization, noting for both that 
while they have often been proscribed, they cannot be avoided.
In this context, it must be noted that a direct contrastive comparison of personal authorial 
references may be difficult when systemic differences between languages may play a role in the 
choice of the form. In addition to deliberately opting for a personal authorial reference, two 
other reasons may also account for choosing a personal form in Slovene academic writing. 
The first is that the use of potential impersonal substitutes (the passive, non-finites) is more 
restricted in Slovene than in English (cf., Blaganje and Konte 1998, 295; Mikolič Južnič 
2013, 76), and the second is that a null subject, i.e., a subject expressed only through verbal 
inflection, is less manifest than an overt subject (cf. Pisanski Peterlin 2016, 280); for similar 
arguments for Slavic languages in general, see also Walková (2018, 93–94).

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3 Methods
A mixed methods approach, combining corpus analysis and semi-structured interviews, was 
used in the present study to provide complementary quantitative and qualitative perspectives 
on the process and products of translation of academic discourse.
3.1 Corpus Analysis
The 42,500-word
1
 specialized parallel corpus used in the study comprises 150 RAAs in 
Slovene and their corresponding 150 English translations. The abstracts are from five different 
disciplines, geography, linguistics, medicine, mechanical engineering and sociology, with 30 
Slovene versions and the corresponding 30 English translations for each discipline. Details on 
the individual subcorpora are given in Table 1 in terms of the number of words.
Table 1. Corpus size with the subcorpora.
Slovene RAAs English RAAs
Geography 2,777 3,513
Mechanical engineering 4,038 4,790
Medicine 7,345 7,864
Sociology 3,185 3,692
Linguistics 2,414 2,977
Total 19,759 22,836
The texts were published between 1999 and 2019 in five international peer-reviewed journals 
(one per discipline), indexed in relevant international databases; all the journals were based in 
Slovenia. The source texts and their translations were published side-by-side. The abstracts were 
authored by researchers who were native speakers of Slovene. Data on translation was only 
available for 52 texts, specifically for all geography abstracts and 22 linguistics abstracts: all were 
translated from Slovene into English by several translators, some of whom were native speakers 
of Slovene, while others were native speakers of English. For other texts, no data on translation 
is available, but it is assumed that the Slovene-to-English translation direction was used, as there 
was a corresponding Slovene version of the research articles for each of the abstracts. It is also 
assumed that at least some of the abstracts from the fields of medicine, mechanical engineering 
and sociology were self-translated, since self-translation of academic writing is a fairly common 
practice in some disciplines (see Pisanski Peterlin 2019 for more details).
The corpus was analysed using Sketch Engine, a software tool for corpus management and 
analysis. The Slovene part of the corpus was searched for all occurrences of the first person 
singular, plural and dual verbs, all case forms of the first person personal pronouns, and all 
1
 The importance of small corpora for research focusing on genre, pragmatics and translation has already been 
highlighted in the literature (see Vaughan and Clancy 2013; Koester 2010).

174 T . Pahor, M. Smodiš, A. Pisanski Peterlin Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts
forms of first person possessive pronouns. The English part of the corpus was searched for first 
person singular and plural personal pronouns ( I, me, we, us) and for first person possessive 
pronouns ( my, mine, our, ours). All the examples identified electronically were subsequently 
examined manually, and all instances of homographs were removed.
The results for the Slovene and English versions were then examined by the first and third 
authors to determine whether the instances of authorial expression were retained, added 
or omitted in translation. The search results were thus classified into the following three 
categories: a complete match (a corresponding authorial expression was identified in both 
language versions), a partial match (a different reference to the author, often less overt, was 
identified in the corresponding text in the other language for instance, such instances were 
not necessarily identified as authorial references in corpus search) and additions/omissions 
(no corresponding expression was found in the corresponding text in the other language, the 
authorial expression was omitted or added in translation). Finally, the expressions of authorial 
presence were examined by the first and third authors to determine whether language-specific 
or discipline-specific preferences may be identified in the corpus.
3.2 Interview Study
The interview study was aimed to elicit data on the practices and perceptions of translators 
in the field of translating academic discourse, with an additional specific focus on their views 
on authorial presence in translated academic texts. An initial version of the interview guide
2
 
was developed by the third author, and tested in a preliminary interview with a translator 
conducted by the second author. The data from the preliminary interview was not included 
in the study. The interview guide was subsequently revised, and the final version of the 
interview guide comprised ten open-ended questions. The semi-structured interviews with 
four translators were carried out between 15 November 2020 and 30 November 2020 via the 
Zoom videoconferencing platform
3
 by the second author. The interview study was part of a 
larger investigation into the experiences of translators with translation of academic discourse.
The interviewees, two of whom were male and two female, were all translators working from 
Slovene into English, and had extensive experience with translation of academic texts. T wo of 
the interviewees were native speakers of Slovene, while two were native speakers of English, 
but all the interviewees were fluent in both languages.
Three of the interviews were conducted in Slovene and one was conducted in English. All 
four interviews were recorded using the recording function of the Zoom platform, and 
subsequently transcribed by the second and third authors. The transcripts were reviewed 
independently by the three researchers to identify emergent themes. A coding framework 
was devised, tested and refined, and any disagreements were resolved by discussion. Nvivo, a 
software tool for qualitative data analysis, was used to code the transcripts.
2
 The English translation of the interview guide is available from the authors upon request.
3
 Because of the pandemic restrictions in force in Slovenia in November 2020, it was not possible to carry out face-to-
face interviews. Videoconferencing technology was chosen because of its potential to replicate, to some extent, the 
face-to-face medium (cf. also Archibald et al., 2019 for more details on the use of Zoom in qualitative interview data 
collection).

175 ARTICLES
4 Results
4.1 Results of the Corpus Study
Table 2 presents the basic data on the occurrences of personal authorial references in all the 
subcorpora.
Table 2. Personal authorial references in the individual subcorpora.
Slovene RAAs English RAAs
No. Per 100 words Per text No. Per 100 words Per text
Geography 38 1.37 1.27 22 0.63 0.73
Mechanical 
engineering
48 1.19 1.60 13 0.27 0.43
Medicine 145 1.97 4.83 56 0.71 1.87
Sociology 48 1.51 1.60 29 0.79 0.97
Linguistics 16 0.66 0.53 6 0.20 0.20
Total 295 1.49 9.83 126 0.55 4.20
A comparison of the raw numbers, normalized frequencies and number of occurrences per 
text for the Slovene and English versions of the abstracts in Table 2 shows that the number 
of personal authorial references is considerably higher in Slovene source texts than in the 
corresponding English translations. This tendency can be observed in all disciplines, although 
the ratio for the normalized frequencies varies from just under 2:1 in sociology to 4:1 in 
mechanical engineering.
A direct juxtaposition of the individual instances of personal authorial references in the source 
and target texts revealed how many of them were retained (complete match), modified (partial 
match), omitted or added in translation. The results are given in T able 3 from the perspective 
of Slovene source texts and in Table 4 from the perspective of their English translations. The 
total number of occurrences and the percentages are provided for each subcorpus.
Table 3. Retention and omission of personal authorial references.
Slovene RAAs
Complete match (%) Partial match (%) Omissions (%) T otal (100%)
Geography 19 (50%) 2 (5.2%) 17 (44.8%) 38 (100%)
Mechanical 
Engineering
6 (12.5%) 1 (2%) 41 (85.5%) 48 (100%)
Medicine 34 (23.5%) 11 (7.5%) 100 (69%) 145 (100%)
Sociology 22 (45.8%) 5 (10.5%) 21 (43.7%) 48 (100%)
Linguistics 3 (19%) 2 (12.5%) 11 (68.5%) 16 (100%)
Total 84 (30.2%) 21 (7.5%) 190 (62.3%) 295 (100%)

176 T . Pahor, M. Smodiš, A. Pisanski Peterlin Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts
Table 3 shows substantial differences among the five disciplines: more personal authorial 
references were omitted than retained or changed in translation in three disciplines, i.e., 
linguistics, mechanical engineering and medicine. In sociology and geography, omissions 
were still quite frequent, but occurred in just under 50% of the cases.
Table 4. Retention and addition of personal authorial references.
English RAAs
Complete match (%) Partial match (%) Additions (%) Total (100%)
Geography 19 (86.3%) 0 (0%) 3 (13.7%) 22 (100%)
Mechanical 
Engineering
 6 (46%) 0 (0%) 7 (54%) 13 (100%)
Medicine 34 (60.7%) 4 (7.1%) 18 (32.2%) 56 (100%)
Sociology 22 (75.9%) 1 (3.5%) 6 (20.6%) 29 (100%)
Linguistics 3 (50%) 0 (0%) 3 (50%) 6 (100%)
Total 84 (63.9%) 5 (2%) 37 (34.1%) 126 (100%)
The results in Table 4 show that additions of authorial references were relatively infrequent. 
While the percentages for additions seem relatively high in mechanical engineering and 
linguistics, the overall number of occurrences of personal authorial references in the English 
translations in these two disciplines was too low to draw any significant conclusions. Example 
1
4
 shows a complete match and that both the form and function are preserved in the English 
version of the abstract:
(1a) Na podlagi strukturnega odziva enosmernega elektromotorja, ki smo ga dobili kot 
posledico harmonskega vzbujanja magnetnih sil z MKE, smo ovrednotili zvočno polje 
v okolici enosmernega elektromotorja. ‘On the basis of the structural response of the DC 
electric motor obtained as a result of the harmonic excitation of magnetic forces using 
FEM, we evaluated the sound field surrounding the DC electric motor.’ (Mechanical 
Engineering)
(1b) Based on the structural response of the DC electric motor that is the result of the 
harmonic excitation of magnetic forces, and was calculated with the FEM, we evaluated 
the sound field surrounding the DC electric motor. (Mechanical Engineering)
The omissions, additions and modifications identified were further examined manually to 
identify the corresponding structures in the source and target texts. The examination showed 
that in cases of omission the authorial references from the source texts were replaced by the 
following three impersonal structures:
4
 All the examples quoted are from the corpus of research article abstracts used in this study. The Slovene source text 
examples are marked with the letter a and provided with an English gloss in inverted commas, while the published 
English translations are marked with the letter b.

177 ARTICLES
A passive form:
The passive voice was th e most frequent impersonal structure to replace a personal authorial 
reference from the Slovene source text in the English translation in all the disciplines except 
for linguistics, where the overall total number of occurrences was very low. Example 2 
illustrates this type of shift in translation. The shift in translation from a personal reference 
to the passive voice seems to have been particularly frequent in descriptions of methodology.  
(2a) Uvodni del smo oblikovali na podlagi dejstev, raziskovalni del pa s pomočjo 
strukturiranega vprašalnika... ‘We formed the introductory part on the basis of facts, and 
the research part with the help of a structured questionnaire...’ (Medicine)
(2b) The introductory part was designed on the basis of facts, and the research work was 
carried out using a structured questionnaire... (Medicine)
A metonym:
Some personal authorial references were replaced by a metonymic expression, i.e. inanimate 
subjects, such as this study or this paper, as in example (3).
(3a) V raziskavi smo ugotovili, da so priložnosti za izboljšave pri preverjanih parametrih... 
‘We found in the study that there are opportunities for improvement in the parameters 
investigate...’ (Medicine)
(3b) The study revealed that there is much space for improvement regarding the studied 
parameters of the ASP ... (Medicine)
A non-finite form:
Instances of non-finite verb forms, as in example (4), replaced personal authorial references 
relatively infrequently.
(4a) Dno Dobrepoljsko-Struškega polja, kraški ravnik v okolici Ponikev ter okoliška 
pobočja Male gore, Suhe krajine in Čušperške planote oblikujejo pokrajino, ki smo jo 
po osrednji reliefni enoti poimenovali Dobrepoljsko-Struški kras. ‘The bottom of the 
Dobrepolje-Struge polje, the karst plain around Ponikve, and the neighbouring slopes 
of Mala gora, Suha krajina, and the Čušperk plateau form the Dobrepolje-Struge karst, 
which we named after the central relief unit.’ (Geography)
(4b) The bottom of the Dobrepolje-Struge polje, the karst corrosion plain around Ponikve, 
and the neighbouring hillslopes of Mala gora, Suha krajina, and the Čušperk plateau 
comprise the Dobrepolje-Struge karst, so named after its central relief unit. (Geography)
However, not all omissions of personal authorial references involved substituting them with 
an impersonal structure. In several cases, the wording of a passage from the source text was 
completely altered in translation, leaving out some of the details from the original text, 
including the personal authorial reference.
(5a) Guarana lahko v priporočenih odmerkih poslabša bolezni srca (predvsem motnje 
srčnega ritma, koronarno bolezen srca, srčno popuščanje) in sladkorno bolezen ter negativno 
vpliva na zdravje nosečnic, doječih žensk in otrok, ki jim zato odsvetujemo uživanje 

178 T . Pahor, M. Smodiš, A. Pisanski Peterlin Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts
guarane. ‘Guarana may in recommended doses exacerbate cardiac disease (especially 
cardiac arrhythmias, coronary heart disease, heart failure) as well as diabetes and may 
negatively affect the health of pregnant women, nursing women and children whom we do 
not advise to consume guarana.’ (Medicine)
(5b) Guarana in therapeutic doses can exacerbate underlying cardiac disease (especially 
cardiac arrhythmias, coronary heart disease, heart failure) and diabetes. Furthermore, 
children, pregnant and nursing women should avoid guarana as well. (Medicine)
Additions were less frequent in translation than omissions; when they did occur, additions 
were mostly used to replace a passive form in the source text, as in example (6).
(6a) Najprej so izpostavljeni ključni vidiki neenakosti med spoloma, iz katerih izhajajo 
argumenti v prid uvedbi UTD. ‘First the key aspects of gender inequality that give rise to 
arguments in support of UBI are highlighted.’ (Sociology)
(6b) We first highlight the key aspects of gender inequality that give rise to arguments in 
support of UBI. (Sociology)
In other cases, a personal authorial reference was added in translation when substantial 
rewording occurred and certain details were added, as in example (7).
(7a) Skupini TOT in TVT se med seboj nista statistično značilno razlikovali niti v 
rezultatih posega, niti v deležu zapletov po posegu. ‘There was no statistically significant 
difference between the TOT and TVT groups with regard to either the results of surgical 
treatment or postoperative complications.’ (Medicine)
(7b) Our retrospective study has confirmed that the efficacy and safety of TOT and 
TVT in the surgical treatment of SUI are comparable. (Medicine)
Modifications, i.e., instances which involved some degree of change, but where the reference 
to the author was still present, were quite infrequent. In some modifications, only the 
grammatical form changed, for instance, instead of the first person subject in the original a 
possessive pronoun was used in translation, as in example (8), or a first person plural subject in 
the original was replaced by a first person singular subject, or similar. In other modifications, 
a personal authorial reference was replaced by a less explicit reference to the other (see for 
instance, example 9), where a first person plural in the original was translated as one, changing 
the meaning from exclusive reference to the author to generic. Instances such as 9b were 
not considered to be explicit personal authorial references, but it should nevertheless be 
acknowledged that some degree of authorial presence was retained in such cases.
(8a) Čeprav je ocena pojavnosti zaradi retrospektivne analize najverjetneje podcenjena, 
menimo, da omenjeni rezultati potrjujejo naša klinična opažanja, da je FNAIT preredko 
diagnosticirana. ‘Even though the evaluation of the incidence is likely to be underestimated 
due to retrospective analysis, we believe that the results mentioned confirm our clinical 
observations that FNAIT is underdiagnosed.’ (Medicine)
(8b) We are aware that the obtained incidence may be underestimated due to retrospective 
analysis of the data; nevertheless, our results confirm our clinical observations that FNAIT 
is underdiagnosed in our area. (Medicine)

179 ARTICLES
(9a) Na ravni tvorbeno-pretvorbeno nepredvidljivih postopkov pa smo opredelili devet 
različnih skupin tvorjenk... ‘At the level of unpredictable transformational-generative 
processes, we have defined nine different groups of derivatives...’ (Linguistics)
(9b) At the level of unpredictable transformational-generative processes, one can define 
nine different groups of derivatives... (Linguistics)
Because of such formal modifications that occurred in translation, the source and target texts 
differed to some extent in the use of individual forms of personal authorial reference. These 
differences are presented in Tables 5 and 6 in terms of the number of occurrences per 100 
words, for the Slovene source texts and English translations, respectively.
Table 5. Frequency of forms of personal authorial reference per 100 words in the Slovene source 
texts.
1st p. sg.
subject
1st p. pl. 
subject
1st p. du. 
subject
1st p. pl. 
object
1st p. pl. 
poss.
Total
Geography 0.11 1.15 0.00 0.11 0.00 1.37
Mechanical Engineering 0.00 1.14 0.00 0.02 0.02 1.19
Medicine 0.00 1.80 0.00 0.05 0.12 1.97
Sociology 0.31 0.91 0.16 0.06 0.06 1.51
Linguistics 0.04 0.54 0.04 0.04 0.00 0.66
Total 0.07 1.28 0.03 0.06 0.06 1.49
There were no instances of object pronouns or possessive pronouns for the singular or dual.
Table 6. Frequency of forms of personal authorial reference per 100 words in the English 
translations.
1st p. sg.
subject
1st p. pl. 
subject
1st p. pl. 
object
1st p. pl. 
poss.
Total
Geography 0.09 0.43 0.09 0.03 0.63
Mechanical Engineering 0.00 0.21 0.00 0.06 0.27
Medicine 0.00 0.43 0.01 0.27 0.71
Sociology 0.16 0.51 0.03 0.08 0.79
Linguistics 0.07 0.10 0.03 0.00 0.20
Total 0.05 0.35 0.03 0.12 0.55
There were no instances of object pronouns or possessive pronouns for the singular.
While the first person plural subject was the preferred form of personal authorial reference in 
both languages in all the disciplines, a slight shift towards using a 1st person plural possessive 
pronoun to express authorial presence can be observed in translation. This shift is most 
pronounced in the abstracts of medical texts, where it accounts for over one third of the cases 
in English translations, but only 6% of the cases in Slovene originals.

180 T . Pahor, M. Smodiš, A. Pisanski Peterlin Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts
4.2 Results of the Interview Study
The analysis of inte rview transcripts showed that all four interviewees had substantial 
experience with translation (from over 10 to over 20 years) of various academic genres (thesis 
abstracts, research articles, research article abstracts, research proposals were specifically 
mentioned) from different disciplines, including mechanical engineering, chemistry, Slovene 
language and literature, Latin language and literature, children’s literature, healthcare studies, 
finance, pedagogy, linguistics, computer science, management and accounting, advertising, 
history, geography, urban planning, dermatology and medicine. In the context of the present 
study on authorial presence, the following themes emerged as central from the analysis 
of interview data: function of authorial presence, cross-linguistic differences, the role of 
discipline and translators’ interventions.
Function of authorial presence
Several different functions of explicit authorial presence emerged in the interviews. Interviewee 
B expressed the opinion that an overt personal reference to the author in a research article 
underlines the agency by focusing on the person who carried out the work. Furthermore, 
she argued that in research grant proposals the first person form is crucial when promises are 
made. Interviewee D pointed out that it is often important to state the facts objectively and 
avoid emotion or personal opinion in academic writing, yet he also singled out nosism (the 
use of the first person plural) to highlight teamwork. Interviewee A argued that a personal 
authorial voice contributes towards making the text more interesting and unique.
Cross-linguistic differences
Three of the interviewees identified the first person plural as a common way of expressing 
authorial presence in Slovene as opposed to English. Interviewee A attributed this specificity to 
a tendency of Slovene texts being somewhat more indirect. “I think this collective we is used in 
your [culture] to avoid giving an order, to avoid being direct. So you don’t give orders to your 
reader, but you soften your writing instead. It has to do with the language and the nation.”
Similarly, Interviewee B underlined that the first person plural form seems to be preferred in 
Slovene, while the singular is avoided, as the authors “seem to be almost afraid to say I”. She 
observed that in her experience the first person singular was used more frequently in English. 
In general, she argued that authorial presence was less “controversial” in English, but she also 
pointed out that there were also English-speaking authors who preferred a very objective, 
impersonal writing style, and Slovene-speaking authors who favoured a more personal style.
Interviewee D described the tendency of Slovene to prefer the first person plural from the 
point of view of translation into English. “I do certainly notice a lot of nosism in Slovenian 
writing, especially the authorial we... where one author is using the plural. And that is very 
peculiar from the standard English textual perspective. The reader is wondering who this we 
is all of sudden, who is the co-author and there isn’t one. In most cases that is considered poor 
style and it’s something I’ll try to correct.”
The role of discipline
All four interviewees referred to certain specific features of various disciplines, also noting 
that individual authors’ preferences may vary considerably, regardless of the discipline, 

181 ARTICLES
genre or culture. Both Interviewee A and Interviewee D observed that there are substantial 
differences between the hard sciences and humanities. Juxtaposing the examples of chemistry 
and the humanities, Interviewee A argued that “in the humanities, we can have nice long 
sentences with words and phrases belonging to a higher register, whereas that is not the 
case with chemistry, where you have sentences that are short, concise and to the point.” 
Interviewee D pointed out that in “hard science there’s very little authorial voice”, compared 
to a discipline such as participative ethnology, where a more personal writing style may be 
used. He furthermore noted that there may be variation within a single discipline, depending 
on the type of research that is reported. “In medicine you can have personal voice as well, 
if you’re doing a case study about an individual patient and you’re describing his emotional 
state, then, of course, you can implement more authorial voice than if it’s a study covering a 
thousand patients or a literature review”.
Translators’ interventions
All of the interviewees confirmed that some sort of an adaptation was necessary in translation 
of academic discourse, including sometimes adaptations of the authorial voice. Both 
Interviewee C and Interviewee B highlighted that they have noted changes in academic 
writing in Slovene, possibly under the influence of English. Interviewee C reported that 
many of the texts that she has been asked to translate are already structured in Slovene in such 
a way as to enable easy translation.
Interviewee B also pointed out that when she intervenes in the text as a translator she attempts 
to justify those interventions to the authors. She reported that in her experience the authors 
often say something like “we were taught in school that you have to be completely objective, 
completely removed in academic discourse”.
Similarly, Interviewee C noted that she always asks the author to take a look at the changes 
to see if he or she agrees with the interventions. Interviewee C was the only one to report an 
experience with translating her own text. She observed that self-translation also involved a 
sort of an inner dialogue about the possible changes made in translation, although she did not 
explicitly refer to authorial presence.
Interviewee B highlighted that a translator has to be consistent in narration: “If you start with 
a personal, first person ‘we tried to do this and that, we therefore analysed’... if you are at that 
personal level, you have to continue in the same way, so that you don’t switch [to a different 
style] within the same sentence.”
Enhancing the fluency and smooth flow of the text were identified as the main reasons 
for intervening with the style of the text, including making changes to the authorial voice. 
Interviewee B pointed out that “the author may have written the text in a hurry, and the text 
needs improvement, and you can do this to make it more fluent.” She expressed a strong belief 
that it was the translators’ responsibility or even their duty to make the text fluent and readable. 
She argued that a number of different pairs of interventions may occur in both directions, 
such as changing nominalizations into clauses or vice versa, making the sentences shorter or 
connecting them, changing the active voice into the passive voice or the other way around.

182 T . Pahor, M. Smodiš, A. Pisanski Peterlin Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts
Interviewee A also observed that “as a translator you have to transform [the text] into a softer, 
more readable form which means that you do not change authorial presence as much as you 
strengthen it”.
Making the text smoother was raised as a reason for intervening by Interviewee D as well: “I 
will change the author’s voice or presence in the text if it seems appropriate. By that I mean 
… if the author would risk… if it would risk sounding impolite or arrogant. Obviously that’s 
not something an author wants to sound like in a research text.” Interviewee D identified the 
underlying connection between authorial presence and the flow of the text: “What I try to 
do in a research text is take off the rough edges if I’m adjusting the author’s voice. Um, I … 
my thought is that if the author does have a presence in a text, the author should be some 
sort of a neutral, sympathetic figure. Not controlling or dominating the text. But if you can 
tell the author is there, the reader should at least like the person and have a positive attitude 
towards them.” In addition to authorial voice, Interviewee D singled out impersonalization 
and hesitancy as elements that may be adjusted in translation of academic texts from Slovene 
into English.
Interviewee D noted that his voice changes when he writes in another language. While he did 
not have experience with self-translation, he believed that “in theory, if I were translating my 
own material into another language, I’d be careful to make myself look good, whether that’s 
through looking important or friendly or whatever the norm is in that language if that were 
an issue in a particular text.”
5 Discussion
This study examined how authorial presence is reshaped in translation of RAAs from Slovene 
into English. The first research question explored how personal authorial references in 
translated English abstracts differed from those in the original Slovene abstracts. The results 
of the corpus study revealed considerable divergences in both the frequency and form of 
personal authorial references between the source and target texts. The normalized frequency 
of personal authorial references was almost three times greater in the Slovene texts than in 
the English translations (see T able 2). Not surprisingly, omissions of authorial references were 
very frequent (over 62% of instances from the Slovene texts were omitted), while additions 
were relatively rare (see Tables 3 and 4). When omission occurred, the personal authorial 
reference was most typically replaced with an impersonal structure, such as the passive 
voice. This seems to directly reflect the more restricted use of the passive voice in Slovene in 
general compared to English (see, Blaganje and Konte 1998, 295); see also Hladnik’s (2002) 
observation for Slovene that the passive is frowned upon by prescriptivists, although it cannot 
be avoided in academic writing.
Another important formal shift in translation needs to be noted: while the vast majority of 
personal authorial references in the Slovene source texts were in the form of the verb in the 
first person plural, which is very much in accordance with the findings of previous contrastive 
studies of Slavic languages (e.g., Vassileva 1998; Čmejrková 2007a; Bašić and Veselica-
Majhut 2016), the possessive first person plural pronoun replaced some of these verbal 
forms in English translations. The interview data provides important information about the 

183 ARTICLES
translators’ reasons for this formal shift. Three of the interviewees singled out the need to 
modify the many first person plural forms found in Slovene academic texts in translation into 
English one of the key changes in authorial presence. The interviewees suggested that Slovene 
is less direct, relying more on the collective we, whereas the singular form is usually avoided.
The second research question compared the shifts in the expression of authorial presence 
in individual disciplines. The corpus analysis revealed a considerable cross-disciplinary 
variation in the use of personal authorial references in both languages, as well as very different 
approaches to translating these references. These cross-disciplinary differences are very much 
in accordance with the results of applied linguistics studies focusing on English (most notably, 
Hyland 2003), and contrastive studies (see, e.g., Breivega, Dahl, and Fløttum 2002; Balažic 
Bulc 2020). The findings of the interview study confirm the interviewees’ awareness of the 
divergent disciplinary conventions.
The shifts in translation were more pronounced in medicine and mechanical engineering 
than in the soft fields. Personal authorial references occurred most frequently in Slovene 
medical abstracts, with almost two instances of such references per 100 words. In their 
English translations about two thirds of the references were replaced by impersonal 
structures; impersonalization was particularly noticeable in descriptions of the methodology. 
When personal authorial references were retained in translated medical abstracts, they were 
sometimes modified in form, for instance first person plural verbs were occasionally translated 
using possessives. Medicine as a discipline was specifically addressed by Interviewee D, who 
pointed out that there was considerable variation among medical texts depending on the 
type of study described. The translation shifts occurring in mechanical engineering were even 
more pronounced: over 80% of the relatively frequent authorial references in the Slovene 
originals were omitted in translation. The English target texts were thus quite impersonal, 
which is quite similar to Hyland’s (2003) findings for mechanical engineering abstracts. In 
the social sciences, geography and sociology, a far greater degree of retention of personal 
authorial reference was found; in both disciplines about one half of the references were 
retained in translation. Interestingly, sociology was also the discipline where the first person 
singular was used with some frequency, both in the source texts and in the translations. 
The greater retention of authorial presence in the two social science disciplines may reflect 
their argumentative nature, as they allow more room for comments and personal opinion. 
Somewhat surprisingly, both the Slovene linguistics abstracts and their English translations 
were marked by a very impersonal style and contained few personal authorial references. This 
is quite distinct from the findings for English reported by Hyland (2003), where self-mentions 
were found to occur relatively frequently in the applied linguistics abstracts, compared to 
science and engineering, but similar to the results obtained by Balažič Bulc (2020), who 
found that self-mentions occurred less frequently in Slovene humanities abstracts (including 
linguistics) than in the abstracts from the natural sciences, social sciences and technology. It is 
interesting that Interviewees A and D also expressed their belief that a personal writing style 
was particularly characteristic of the humanities.
The third research question addressed the translators’ reasons for the observed shifts in 
translation. The interview study underlined a strong acknowledgement of the need to adjust 

184 T . Pahor, M. Smodiš, A. Pisanski Peterlin Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts
the translation to the conventions of the target culture. The interviewees’ responses showed 
that their main reason for interfering with authorial presence was to enhance the fluency 
and the flow of the target text. Thus Interviewee B specifically mentioned the translator’s 
responsibility to improve the accessibility of an academic text. While her comment referred 
to research proposals and their role in obtaining funding, the same principle can also be 
applied to abstracts. With appropriate interventions, which contribute to adapting target 
texts to target culture conventions, translated abstracts conform better to the expectations of 
the target audience. Interviewee A foregrounded a different aspect of interventions with the 
authorial presence in translation: in his opinion, a more personal, but less collective writing 
style can make an academic text more interesting. Conversely, Interviewee D stressed that 
the need for the author of an academic text to sound neutral and not to dominate the text. 
Although none of the interviewees raised the possibility that different discourse functions 
realized through personal authorial references may occasionally play a role in the shifts 
identified in translation, this possibility should not be ignored. The inclusive first person 
plural may no longer be suitable in the translated texts as the audience of the English texts 
is much broader (cf. Pisanski Peterlin 2016 for more details on translators’ interventions to 
adapt the text to a new audience).
6 Conclusion
Although RAAs are frequently translated or self-translated in multilingual settings, relatively 
little is known about the challenges arising in translation of this pivotal academic genre. As 
they play a crucial role in disseminating new research findings, it seems particularly important 
to develop a thorough understanding of how the target texts are adjusted to the expectations 
of the audience in terms of their rhetorical patterns, including authorial presence. Our study 
has identified several important strategies occurring in translation of abstracts from Slovene 
into English, including a tendency to reduce the number of personal authorial references and 
a less pronounced reliance on the first person plural subjects.
In interpreting these findings, several limitations should be considered. The first is the corpus 
size and composition. While a small, specialized corpus is essential for an initial investigation 
into rhetorical phenomena, further research on a larger corpus with a wider selection of 
disciplines would be needed to enhance the validity of the findings. The second limitation is 
the lack of detail on the translation process available for some of the texts in the corpus. In 
future studies of translated abstracts, the availability of data on the translators should be one 
of the factors in selecting the materials for the corpus. Finally, a limitation of the interview 
study also needs to be noted: although our interviewees had considerable experience with 
translation of academic discourse, they were not the translators of the abstracts included in 
the corpus. In future research, additional discourse-based interviews with translators of the 
abstracts studied could contribute to a better understanding of the translation process and 
the actual translation decisions.       
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