An Approach to the Translation of Terminology in Texts from Social Sciences Gerardo Bensi Abstract: From the point of view of translation and interpretation, terms from social sciences present a number of unique features, namely: (a) the possibility of being confused with everyday language words, (b) their theoretical implications and (c) the lack of multilingual lexicographical works providing equivalents. This presentation will address the fundamental epistemological reasons underlying these difficulties and some comprehension and translation strategies to overcome them, such as paying attention to the structure of academic papers, identifying the research methods used and finding parallel texts. The purpose of the talk is to highlight how an awareness of the different theoretical and methodological perspectives evidenced by articles from social sciences can be useful to avoid translation pitfalls and guide terminological research. 1. Introduction The translation of academic works from social sciences poses a number of specific problems. This area of translation has received scarce attention as compared to technical and literary translation. Among the particular difficulties faced by the translator of social sciences, terminology deserves some reflection, since the strategies for terminological research usually applied in the translation of texts from natural sciences or technical fields cannot be carried over automatically to the translation of social sciences. In other words, terms from these fields cannot be approached with the same mindset as terms from “hard” or natural sciences. This presentation is divided into three parts: the first one examines fundamental differences between the terms from natural and social sciences; the second one addresses the problem of the lack of standardized translations for terms from social sciences; finally, the third one provides some practical suggestions for terminological research. 2. Fundamental Differences between Terms from Natural and Social Sciences Concepts from social sciences tend to be hardly distinguishable as compared to those from natural sciences. In general, in a text about electronics or engineering, technical terms can be easily identified, usually because they are clearly distinct from everyday language and they refer to a thing, action or process that has a role in a certain procedure, system or mechanism. On the contrary, social scientists and theoreticians, rather than coining entirely new terms, have usually taken words from everyday language and given them a new specific meaning as part of a constellation of other concepts (with the possible exception of psychoanalysis, with the id, the superego, the preconscious, etc.). As a result, in social and human sciences, you may come across terms such as “domination”, “exploitation” or “class”, which we use loosely in everyday language (and that is OK, because we do not use them to make science), but which, in a paper on class structure, have a technical meaning, that is, they have specific definitions as part of certain theories. So, the first challenge posed by terms from social sciences is actually spotting them. It is important to distinguish what the main challenge posed by terms of these particular fields is and what it is not. At first sight, it may be thought that the problem with terms from the social sciences is that they are more abstract than those in other fields. For example, “ontological security” (Giddens) is a term that does not refer to a concrete entity in the same