Chapter 17 highlights how translation studies’ interaction with genre analysis, register studies, critical language study, contrastive rhetoric and the study of languages for special/academic purposes relates to the translation of academic texts. Most investigations contrast English with languages such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Slovene, Hungarian, Finnish and Danish, and the foci of analyses relate to a wide range of topics, such as translation strategies, style and register, terminology, and culture-specific discourse conventions. The chapter identifies the challenges that the field faces and the areas where further research is needed.

This chapter seeks to explore the potential of increasing epistemological access for university students of African languages through the translation of English academic texts. It uses charts and tables to illustrate the negative effects that the scarcity of academic texts written in African languages has on students’ academic performance. A scientific text based on periodontal examination was translated from English to isiXhosa. Thereafter, ten test questions based on this text were drawn up using Bloom’s Taxonomy model. These questions were made available in both English and isiXhosa and were distributed among twenty-five first-year students of an isiXhosa mother tongue course. In this group, thirteen students wrote the test in isiXhosa, while twelve of them wrote it in English. The test results were compared to investigate whether students obtain higher marks when taught and examined in their first language or in their additional language. Ultimately, the researcher tried to investigate whether or not there is a relationship between students’ academic performance and their language of teaching and learning (LoTL). Furthermore, the study investigated the significance of mother-tongue-based education for curriculum access.