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A source text[1][2] is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.

More generally, source material or symbolic sources are objects meant to communicate information, either publicly or privately, to some person, known or unknown. Typical symbolic sources include written documents such as letters, notes, receipts, ledgers, manuscripts, reports, or public signage, or graphic art, etc. Symbolic sources exclude, for example, bits of broken pottery or scraps of food excavated from a midden—and this regardless of how much information can be extracted from an ancient trash heap, or how little can be extracted from a written document.[3]

Classification in levels

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In historiography, distinctions are commonly made between three levels of source texts: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary

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Primary sources are firsthand written accounts made at the time of an event by someone who was present. They have been described as those sources closest to the origin of the information or idea under study.[1][4] These types of sources have been said to provide researchers with "direct, unmediated information about the object of study."[5] Primary sources are sources which, usually, are recorded by someone who participated in, witnessed, or lived through the event. These are also usually authoritative and fundamental documents concerning the subject under consideration. This includes published original accounts, published original works, or published original research. They may contain original research or new information not previously published elsewhere.[6] They have been distinguished from secondary sources, which often cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources.[7] They serve as an original source of information or new ideas about the topic. Primary and secondary, however, are relative terms, and any given source may be classified as primary or secondary, depending on how it is used.[8] Physical objects can be primary sources.

Secondary and tertiary

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Secondary sources are written accounts of history based upon the evidence from primary sources. These are sources which, usually, are accounts, works, or research that analyze, assimilate, evaluate, interpret, and/or synthesize primary sources. These are not as authoritative and are supplemental documents concerning the subject under consideration. These documents or people summarize other material, usually primary source material. They are academics, journalists, and other researchers, and the papers and books they produce. This includes published accounts, published works, or published research. For example, a history book drawing upon diary and newspaper records.

Tertiary sources are compilations based upon primary and secondary sources.[1][9][4] These are sources which, on average, do not fall into the above two levels. They consist of generalized research of a specific subject under consideration. Tertiary sources are analyzed, assimilated, evaluated, interpreted, and/or synthesized from secondary sources, also. These are not authoritative and are just supplemental documents concerning the subject under consideration. These are often meant to present known information in a convenient form with no claim to originality. Common examples are encyclopedias and textbooks.

The distinction between primary source and secondary source is standard in historiography, while the distinction between these sources and tertiary sources is more peripheral, and is more relevant to the scholarly research work than to the published content itself.

Below are types of sources that most generally, but not absolutely, fall into a certain level. The letters after an item describes generally the type it is (though this can vary pending the exact source). P is for primary sources, S is for secondary sources, and T is for tertiary sources; those with ?s are indeterminate.

Authoritative sources

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A source that is official is called authoritative if it is known to be reliable and its authority or authenticity is widely recognized by experts in the field. Libraries specialize in collecting these types of resources so that students and faculty have the tools they need to research effectively.[10]

In translation

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In translation, a source text (ST) is a text written in a given source language which is to be or has been, translated into another language. According to Jeremy Munday's definition of translation, "the process of translation between two different written languages involves the changing of an original written text (the source text or ST) in the original verbal language (the source language or SL) into a written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal language (the target language or TL)".[11] The terms 'source text' and 'target text' are preferred over 'original' and 'translation' because they do not have the same positive vs. negative value judgment.

Translation scholars including Eugene Nida and Peter Newmark have represented the different approaches to translation as falling broadly into source-text-oriented or target-text-oriented categories.[12]

See also

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References

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Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia
from Grokipedia
In translation studies, a source text (often abbreviated as ST) is the original text composed in a source language that serves as the foundation for producing a translated version, known as the target text, in another language. This text represents the starting point for the translation process, where the translator aims to convey the intended meaning, purpose, and nuances of the original without alteration. The source text plays a pivotal role in , particularly in discussions of equivalence, which refers to the target text's ability to replicate the source text's functionality, stylistic impact, or situational context. Theorists such as Katharina Reiss emphasize that equivalence requires the target text to achieve the same communicative purpose as the source text, whether informative, expressive, or operative in nature. In practice, translators must fully comprehend the source text's linguistic, cultural, and pragmatic elements—such as , , and —to identify potential challenges like cultural mismatches or idiomatic expressions before rendering it into the target language. While traditionally viewed as a fixed original, contemporary views recognize the source text as potentially dynamic, incorporating multiple influences or even prior translations in cases of indirect translation. Beyond translation, the term source text extends to textual criticism and editing, where it denotes the primary or document from which variants, editions, or analyses are derived, ensuring fidelity to the original wording and structure during scholarly reproduction. This broader application underscores its importance in preserving historical, literary, or cultural authenticity across disciplines.

Definition and Fundamentals

Core Definition

A source text is defined as the original, unaltered document or material from which subsequent interpretations, translations, or analyses are derived, serving as the foundational element in scholarly and translational processes. In translation studies, it represents the initial text in the source language that undergoes transformation into a target text, central to debates on equivalence and . This concept extends beyond mere linguistic transfer to encompass the text's role as a reference point for deriving meaning, though its interpretation may vary across cultural and ideological contexts. Key characteristics of a source text include its authenticity, which ensures fidelity to the author's and the original cultural embedding, preventing distortions in derived works. refers to the documented origin and historical trajectory of the text, influencing how it is contextualized and evaluated for reliability in or . maintains the text's internal coherence, including cohesion, situational factors, and socio-cultural norms, to preserve its intended meaning without fragmentation. These attributes collectively distinguish the source text as a coherent, authored entity rather than fragmented elements.

Historical Development

The concept of source texts emerged from ancient scribal practices, where copyists meticulously reproduced writings on durable media to preserve knowledge across generations. In around 3000 BCE, scribes trained in schools at sites like inscribed clay tablets with administrative, literary, and religious content, establishing early conventions for accurate duplication to maintain textual integrity amid fragile materials. Similarly, in and the , scribes copied hieroglyphic and texts on or stone, often adding colophons to note copying fidelity, which laid foundational principles for recognizing authoritative originals versus derivatives. By the , Greek scholars in during the 3rd century BCE systematized through the , collating and editing manuscripts of and other classics to reconstruct presumed originals from variant copies. In medieval , monastic scribes produced codices—bound volumes of replacing scrolls—copying Latin and Greek works with notations on sources, though errors accumulated over centuries due to manual transcription. The marked a pivotal shift toward prioritizing original source texts, as humanists advocated "" (to the sources), seeking unmediated access to and Latin manuscripts over medieval interpretations. Scholars like of edited biblical and classical texts directly from Greek codices, emphasizing philological accuracy to revive antiquity's authenticity amid the era's intellectual revival. The invention of the in the mid-15th century by accelerated this evolution by enabling mass production of standardized texts, reducing scribal errors and democratizing access to classical sources while preserving variants in incunabula editions. This movement spurred the recovery of lost works through Byzantine refugees and Italian expeditions, fostering a critical approach that distinguished primary sources from later accretions. In the , advanced with Karl Lachmann's genealogical method, which treated manuscript variants as family trees to reconstruct archetypes by identifying shared errors among copies. Lachmann applied this to editions of and the , prioritizing older, less contaminated sources to approximate originals, influencing modern stemmatics. The 20th and 21st centuries witnessed the transition to digital editions, transforming source text preservation through computational tools that enable collation of thousands of manuscripts instantaneously. Projects like the Linguae Graecae (TLG), initiated in 1972 at the , digitized Greek texts for searchable access, laying groundwork for electronic textual criticism. The , launched in 1987 at with funding, expanded this by providing open-access editions of over 2,400 ancient Greek and Latin works, including morphological analysis and alignments to facilitate scholarly reconstruction of sources. Open-access repositories such as the and further democratized source texts in the , hosting digitized codices and rare editions to support global textual analysis without physical constraints. Since the 2020s, artificial intelligence has increasingly been integrated into digital humanities projects for textual criticism, enabling automated collation of variants, pattern recognition in large textual corpora, and enhanced reconstruction of archetypes, as explored in curricula and research on AI's role in scholarly editing.

Classification Systems

Primary Sources

Primary sources, within the classification of source texts, are original documents or artifacts created contemporaneously with the events or phenomena they describe, offering direct, first-hand evidence from witnesses or participants. These materials include diaries, personal letters, official government records, and eyewitness accounts, which capture immediate experiences without later interpretation or synthesis. For example, in textual criticism, an autograph manuscript serves as a primary source text. Unlike secondary sources that analyze or reinterpret such originals, primary sources emphasize raw, unfiltered testimony tied to their historical moment. Identification of primary sources relies on rigorous archival verification methods, such as examining to confirm the document's origin, , and contextual authenticity. Palaeographic analysis further aids identification by studying handwriting styles and script variations to date manuscripts and detect inconsistencies suggestive of later fabrication. These techniques ensure that claimed primary texts align with the era and creator they purport to represent, often involving cross-referencing with cataloged collections in repositories like . Preservation of primary sources faces significant challenges, including physical deterioration from environmental factors like humidity, light exposure, and material degradation, which threaten fragile items such as paper or parchment. Forgeries pose another risk, where fabricated documents mimic authentic ones through forged signatures or anachronistic details, requiring forensic scrutiny of paper, ink, and stylistic elements for detection. Access restrictions commonly limit handling to safeguard originals, driven by concerns over privacy, security, and physical wear, with many archives enforcing rules like supervised viewing or requiring researcher credentials. Modern solutions, particularly digitization, address these issues by creating high-resolution digital surrogates that reduce wear on originals while enabling broader access through online repositories. In translation studies, digitizing primary source texts like ancient inscriptions allows translators to work with accurate reproductions. This process involves scanning at preservation-quality standards, metadata tagging, and secure storage to mitigate obsolescence and ensure long-term usability.

Secondary and Tertiary Sources

Secondary sources represent interpretations, critiques, or syntheses derived directly from primary sources, providing analysis rather than original data or firsthand accounts. These materials, such as scholarly journal articles, , or literary criticisms, reorganize and evaluate primary content to offer context, explanations, or new perspectives on the original events, documents, or artifacts. For instance, a historical might synthesize letters and diaries (primaries) to construct a narrative of an individual's life, emphasizing interpretive layers that build upon but do not replicate the raw evidence; , a secondary source text could be a critical edition used as the basis for further . This derivative nature allows secondary sources to facilitate deeper understanding but positions them as one step removed from the originating material. Tertiary sources, in turn, compile and aggregate information from secondary sources, serving as overviews, indexes, or tools that distill broader without introducing original . Examples include encyclopedias, bibliographies, and abstract databases, which organize and summarize secondaries to aid quick access and of scholarly . Unlike secondaries, tertiaries do not interpret or ; instead, they repackage existing syntheses into accessible formats, such as almanacs or directories, highlighting their role as further derivatives in the source . This compilation function makes them valuable starting points for but underscores their reliance on the and accuracy of underlying materials. Both secondary and tertiary sources carry inherent limitations due to their status, including potential biases introduced through interpretation and a dependency on the accuracy of primaries. In secondaries, authors' perspectives can embed subjective viewpoints or errors, such as cultural biases or selective emphasis, which may propagate inaccuracies from flawed primaries or alter historical nuance. Tertiary sources amplify these issues by compounding biases across multiple layers, often lacking attribution to specific analyses and offering no mechanism for original verification. Consequently, researchers must these with primaries to mitigate risks of outdated, incomplete, or skewed information.

Role in Scholarly and Translation Contexts

Functions in Research

Source texts, particularly primary ones, serve as essential providers of in academic , offering unfiltered, firsthand accounts that substantiate claims and ensure authenticity across disciplines. In historical studies, for instance, diaries, letters, and official documents act as raw data to corroborate events and interpretations in various fields, such as analyses of practices. Similarly, in , original works like novels or poems provide the core material for textual analysis, enabling scholars to examine themes, structures, and without intermediary interpretations. In , primary sources such as statutes, , and constitutions form the binding foundation for arguments, establishing precedents that guide judicial decisions and ensure consistency in applying the . These texts also facilitate hypothesis testing by supplying original data for empirical validation and refinement of research questions. Researchers begin with source texts to formulate working hypotheses, drawing on their immediacy to test ideas against unaltered evidence, as seen in scientific inquiries where historical records or lab reports confirm or refute proposed models. In the end stages of inquiry, they reinforce conclusions by serving as verifiable proof, reducing reliance on potentially biased summaries and promoting rigorous scrutiny. For example, ancient inscriptions or manuscripts can test linguistic hypotheses about cultural exchanges, while archival legal documents validate interpretations of historical precedents. Contextual framing is another key function, where source texts embed research within broader socio-cultural or temporal settings, illuminating nuances that secondary analyses might overlook. In history, personal correspondences reveal societal attitudes, providing depth to events like political revolutions. Literary source texts situate works within their era's conventions, aiding analyses of influence and evolution. In , foundational documents like constitutions frame ongoing debates on and , offering historical grounding for contemporary applications. Methodological integration of source texts involves standardized citation practices to maintain and traceability. The Modern Language Association (MLA) style, prevalent in , emphasizes author-page citations for literary and historical texts to highlight direct engagement with originals. In contrast, the American Psychological Association (APA) format, common in social sciences and law-related fields, prioritizes author-date references to underscore timeliness and empirical support. Critical evaluation techniques further ensure reliability, including assessing the source's , potential biases, intended audience, and corroboration with other materials to verify accuracy and relevance. Interdisciplinary applications extend these functions, with source texts enabling specialized inquiries. In , historical texts and inscriptions serve as primary evidence for etymological studies, tracing word origins through comparative analysis of ancient languages to reconstruct semantic shifts. In the sciences, original empirical records from past experiments validate historical data trends, allowing researchers to and cross-verify long-term datasets for and to refine modern hypotheses, as in or genetic studies drawing on archival observations.

Applications in Translation

In translation and practice, the source text serves as the foundational element from which the target text is derived, with prioritizing the preservation of semantic and cultural equivalence to convey the original meaning and intent effectively. This role underscores the translator's responsibility to bridge linguistic structures while maintaining the source's , ensuring that the experiences an equivalent communicative effect. Key translation strategies revolve around achieving equivalence between the source and target texts, notably through literal (formal) equivalence, which emphasizes structural fidelity to the source's wording and syntax, and dynamic equivalence, which focuses on reproducing the source's effect on the reader through natural adaptations in the target language. Developed by linguist , dynamic equivalence prioritizes the receptor's response over verbatim replication, allowing translators to handle ambiguities, idioms, and culturally specific expressions by substituting equivalent forms that preserve the overall message without distorting the source's essence. For instance, idiomatic phrases in the source text, such as English "," may be rendered dynamically in another language with a comparable to avoid literal nonsensicality, thereby upholding semantic fidelity. Translators encounter significant challenges when source texts involve cultural gaps or obsolete language, which can hinder direct equivalence and require adaptive techniques to avoid loss of meaning. Cultural gaps arise from references unique to the source's , such as historical or symbols, necessitating explanatory adaptations or to ensure comprehension in the target . Obsolete language, including archaic terms or dialects, further complicates fidelity by creating temporal linguistic barriers, often addressed through modernization or glossaries that align the source's intent with contemporary target norms. Computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools play a crucial role in safeguarding source text integrity by segmenting content, leveraging databases to reuse approved source-target alignments, and enforcing terminology consistency across projects. These tools, such as SDL Trados or , reference the original source segments to minimize deviations, thereby supporting translators in maintaining both semantic accuracy and cultural nuance during the adaptation process.

Establishing Authority

Criteria for Authoritativeness

Determining the authoritativeness of a source text involves assessing its reliability and credibility through established criteria that ensure its origin, consistency, and integrity. , or the verification of a text's origin and , is a foundational criterion, as it establishes the context of creation, authorship, and transmission to detect potential forgeries or alterations. Corroboration with other sources strengthens authoritativeness by cross-verifying claims against independent evidence, reducing the risk of isolated inaccuracies or biases. Editorial transparency, which includes clear documentation of any edits, annotations, or reproductions, further bolsters credibility by allowing scholars to evaluate the fidelity of the presented text to its original form. Evaluation frameworks for source texts often rely on processes, where experts scrutinize manuscripts for historical accuracy, methodological soundness, and contextual relevance before or acceptance in scholarly collections. For ancient or medieval manuscripts, forensic analysis provides an objective layer of verification, employing techniques such as ink , paper composition testing, and paleographic examination of to confirm authenticity and . In contemporary contexts, digital authenticity emerges as a critical factor, with technologies like enabling immutable records that track a text's digital lifecycle from creation to , thereby combating tampering in online archives. Additionally, evaluating AI-generated source texts requires scrutiny for inherent biases, as large models often perpetuate , racial, or cultural distortions from their training data, undermining reliability unless explicitly mitigated through transparency in generation processes. These criteria collectively inform the of source texts as primary or secondary, ensuring their appropriate use in .

Notable Examples

The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in caves near , serve as a primary source for biblical texts, containing the oldest known manuscripts of the , dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE. These scrolls, including nearly complete books like , presented authority challenges due to initial restricted access and debates over their and authenticity, which delayed scholarly publication until the 1990s. Overcome through international collaboration and digital imaging, their authority was affirmed by textual comparisons showing remarkable similarity to the later , thus stabilizing biblical transmission. Their impact on research has been profound, enriching understandings of and influencing studies by revealing shared linguistic and thematic elements, while prompting revisions in biblical translations to incorporate variant readings. Shakespeare's , published in as Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, stands as a foundational source text for , compiling 36 of Shakespeare's plays from editions and manuscripts. Authority challenges arose from its editorial inconsistencies, including compositor errors, variant spellings, and unauthorized alterations by compilers John Heminges and , which complicated attributions of . These were addressed through modern bibliographic analysis and reproductions, establishing the Folio as the most authoritative compilation despite imperfections. Its impact endures in research, shaping by providing the basis for subsequent editions and influencing performances, while enabling deeper analysis of Shakespeare's language and themes in academic studies. The United Nations Charter, adopted in 1945 and serving as the foundational for the UN, functions as a text in legal studies, outlining principles of international , sovereignty, and . Authority challenges included enforcement limitations, as its provisions lack direct coercive power, leading to debates over its supremacy in . These were mitigated by judicial interpretations from bodies like the , affirming its role as a constitutional framework for . The Charter's impact on research is evident in legal scholarship, where it codifies norms influencing treaties and , and supports studies on global cooperation, with over 190 member states ratifying it as binding. Among ancient epics, the , an Akkadian poem from composed around 2100–1200 BCE and preserved on tablets, exemplifies a textual source of enduring cultural authority. Reconstruction challenges stemmed from its fragmentary state across multiple libraries, including the , requiring philological piecing together amid linguistic variations. Authority was bolstered by 19th-century translations, confirming its status as the oldest known epic narrative. Its research impact includes illuminating early human themes like mortality and friendship, with parallels to biblical flood stories influencing and Near Eastern studies. As another notable example, the , a inscribed in 196 BCE with a in three scripts—Egyptian , Demotic, and Greek—acts as an authoritative inscriptional source for ancient Egyptian linguistics. Decipherment challenges, pursued by scholars like from 1822, involved correlating scripts despite damaged sections and evolving grammars. Overcome via comparative analysis, it unlocked hieroglyphic reading, establishing its unimpeachable status as a bilingual key. The impact on research revolutionized , enabling translations of thousands of texts and advancing understandings of Ptolemaic administration and religious practices.

References

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