Useful materials from the Laboratory for Scientific Translation
Which translation – article or paper – more accurately conveys the meaning of «научная статья»?
Despite the fact that article and paper are quite close synonyms and are both translated into Russian as «статья», there are still differences between them. According to English dictionaries and corpus analysis, “paper”is more often used to describe the genre of “original scientific article”. Thus, the Ngram Viewer tool shows a higher frequency of the phrase research paper compared to research article. However, in order to describe other genres, such as review articles or research notes, the word “article” is more commonly used.Therefore, while it may be true that“paper” predominates in natural science disciplines, while “article” is more commonly used in socio-humanitarian disciplines, other factors should also be taken into account.
