Writing Project 2

Sofie Gold
University of California, Santa Barbara
Mr. Tym Chajdas
Writing 2
30 May 2020
 Academic Article: “The influence of scuba diving experience on divers’ perceptions, and its

implications for managing diving destinations” by Serena Lucrezi

Email #1:

Email #2:
Email #3:

Email #4:
Email #5:

Email #6:
 WP2 Reflection

In writing this assignment and performing the translation from an academic article into a

chain of informal emails written between acquaintances, I exposed myself to genre conventions

that had never been clear to me in the past. I feel that this assignment opened my mind up to new

forums of exploration and allowed me to see with clarity the specific conventions of an academic

article as opposed to an informal set of emails. In writing the translation, things about the

rhetorical situation were also shifted, the audience and the purpose were changed, however the

context remained somewhat intact. In terms of this translation, I would say that most of the core

information survived the translation but the tone was completely different, as a result of the new

and much less formal genre of emails.

The article that I chose to translate, entitled “The Influence of Scuba Diving Experience

on Divers’ Perceptions and Its Implications for Managing Diving Destinations”, provides insight

into a study done of hundreds of Scuba divers and their experiences at two destinations in

particular, Italy and Mozambique. In translating this article, I found it extremely difficult to keep

the integrity of the information contained in the initial article due to the vast difference between

the initial genre and the translated genre. Academic journal articles tend to be highly specific,

use academic jargon, and contain lots of information on their topic, emails tend to be short and to

the point, and don’t typically contain tons of information. In writing these example emails to

translate the article, I found myself struggling also to make the information somewhat

personable, because emails and such a personal form of communication that it wouldn’t make

sense to have detached and academic jargon in them. I think I did a good job in making the

translation maintain as much of the information from the academic article as possible while still

making it make sense post translation. If I had this assignment to do over again I would choose a
different academic article, one that I am more familiar with, in order to better accomplish the

task at hand. I did find it to be a struggle translating something that I wasn’t super familiar with

myself, but I wanted the challenge of analyzing a new genre.

In terms of the rhetorical situation, I found this to be one of the most intriguing and

challenging aspects of this writing project. The rhetorical situation of the initial academic paper

consisted of the audience, which was those with an interest in either SCUBA diving or the

general health and wellbeing of the world’s oceans. The purpose of this article was to call

attention to the impacts that SCUBA diving is having on the maintenance of popular dive sites

and how being a diver influences one’s perspective on these things in comparison to non-divers.

The context surrounding this article required some knowledge of the world of diving, some

geography of the world and its oceans, and the ability to understand the current climate

surrounding the many communities in the diving world. This rhetorical triangle was highly

specific to this article and it’s discourse community, which meant translating it into informal

emails required some attention and some shifting of the rhetorical aspects of the writing. The

new translation has a new set of rhetorical pieces that make up its new and “improved” rhetorical

situation. The audience in the translated writing depends on which perspective one is looking at,

whether it be emails from ‘fellowscubadiver@yahoo.com’ or ‘scubadiver1@hotmail.com’ the

audience was whichever was on the receiving end of the emails. The purpose of the emails was

also somewhat different than the initial purpose, however maintained some of the original

characteristics. The new purpose was to inform ‘Scubadiver1’ about the nature of the

maintenance of these Scuba sites and essentially share the information that ‘Fellow Scuba Diver’

has on this topic. The context of the emails is the one thing that remained almost exactly the

same after translation. Aside from the context of the emails themselves, which is assumed to be a
personal conversation, maybe the two recipients are friends or colleagues, the general context

remains. There is still knowledge of the diving world needed and some understanding of the

current state our oceans are in. The shift in rhetorical situation was something that I noticed right

away, bridging the gap between these two styles of writing required many different aspects to

shift in order to complete the translation.

When writing this paper, another challenge I identified was the obvious disparity in the

language used in the different genres. When translating, I kept this in mind and used it to my

advantage, in order to show readers and make the genre conventions of both disciplines as clear

to my audience as they became to me. By picking these two genres, I wanted them to be

extremely different, to showcase their differences and put on display their unique aspects in

order to deepen my understanding of the two styles of rhetoric. I specifically chose the translated

style of emails because I find that modern communication through technology is a huge

discipline in and of itself in our society today, and it is oftentimes more easily understood due to

its informal nature. I wanted the translated piece to maintain the information of the academic

article, while demonstrating a completely different genre and a new rhetorical situation, to show

that information is flexible and that our minds are capable of comprehending information in

different forms. I enjoyed writing the translated emails because it tested my own comprehension

of the academic writing, which I found to be difficult to understand at times due to the specific

and scientific words used in that discourse community.

Overall, I think the integrity of the academic article did not necessarily survive the

translation to such an informal genre, however, the overarching point of the article did, and much

of the supporting information that allowed for this article to be understood also survived. In

writing the translation I found it especially difficult to maintain the tone and the academic
language that the author used because of the informal nature of writing an email. Some

conventions of emails include a greeting, generally somewhat personal because this form of

communication assumes the recipients know each other to some extent. A second convention

would be the call and response way of speaking and prompting questions for the other person in

the emails to answer. It would be strange for an email from one avid diver to another to contain

such scientific jargon, in a person to person interaction at this level, that simply wouldn’t make

sense. So, while some of the integrity was lost, I tried to maintain what I could and keep the

backbone of the information in the email chain to accomplish this translation. This translation

required me to keep in mind the relationship between the initial author and her audience, and the

new authors and how different their audience was after translation. In addition to this I integrated

information from the article seamlessly by creating a questioning dynamic between the two

people exchanging emails. With one prompting information and the other elaborating on his own

“knowledge” to demonstrate most of the key information that the initial article contained.

While this translation may not be perfect in terms of containing every specific piece of

information that the academic journal article contained, it does a pretty good job of

demonstrating key differences between these two genres and their conventions. I learned a lot

about both formal and informal styles of writing and the key aspects of both of these. Not only

do I feel like my skills improved from this writing project, I feel like my overall understanding of

rhetorical situations and the general conventions associated with each genre have also gained

clarity and that I have a more comprehensive view of discourse communities.

Works Cited:
1. Cullen, Mary. “How to Write a Business Email (Updated for 2020).” Business Writing

Courses Online or Onsite, www.instructionalsolutions.com/blog/business-email.

2. Lucrezi, Serena, et al. “The Influence of Scuba Diving Experience on Divers’

Perceptions, and Its Implications for Managing Diving Destinations.” Plos One, vol. 14,

no. 7, 2019, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0219306.