This book looks at the translations which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions and whose source texts had appeared in the Journal des Sçavans during the period 1665 to 1700. The theoretical background of the study is Systemic Functional Linguistics. The book provides linguistic analyses of both translations and source texts, considering in particular process types, the nature of themes, modality and nominalization of processes. The periods looked at are defined in terms of the editors of the respective journals. Differences in the linguistic features of the translations and source texts are explained in terms of the historical context. Since these were the first two academic periodicals, the texts studied here were the first attempts at translating academic articles, and thus have particular significance.

David Banks is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France. He has degrees in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge (UK), and in English from the Université de Nantes (France), where he also obtained his doctorate. He has an HDR from the Université de Bordeaux 2. He is former Head of the English Department, Director of ERLA (Equipe de Recherche en Linguistique Appliquée) and Chairman of AFLSF (Association Française de la Linguistique Systémique Fonctionnelle). He is author or editor of over 30 books and has published over 130 academic articles. His publication The Development of Scientific English, Linguistic features and historical context (Equinox), won the ESSE Language and Linguistics book award 2010. His research interests include the diachronic and synchronic study of scientific text and the application of Systemic Functional Linguistics to English and French.