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Babel: Online-First Articles

“So if you’re going fossil hunting, that’s where you should look”

Popularization for children in science museum websites

| University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
| University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Whether directed at adults or children, popularization can be viewed as a process of “translating” and “recontextualizing” expert discourse for a lay audience. In fact, knowledge dissemination for children appears to entail an additional form of “translation,” given their limited background knowledge. This “re-translation” often occurs on dedicated websites based on “edutainment.” While most museum websites function as promotional tools or as agents of knowledge dissemination, a small number of them are targeted at children and offer texts that insert museum objects in a broader context. By means of a small case study, this paper explores how knowledge is popularized and presented in two science museum websites: the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London and OLogy, the science website for children of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. From a corpus-linguistic and discourse-analysis perspective, our interest lies in how popularization takes shape in these two websites, the former intended for different age groups and the latter explicitly addressing children. Quantitative and qualitative results show similarities and dissimilarities, thus accounting for different types of popularization as forms of translation. The analysis aims to grant insights to translators and interpreters engaged in museum adaptations and translation of contexts.

Keywords: popularization for children, museum websites, translation, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Popularization in museum websites for children
    • 2.1Museum websites for children
  • 3.Corpus and methodology
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Quantitative analysis
    • 4.2Qualitative analysis
      • 4.2.1Dinosaurs and paleontology in the NHM
      • 4.2.2Paleontology in OLogy
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00398.sez
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