Disciplinary identity in translation: A cross-disciplinary study of author self-reference in ELF research article abstracts

Translating local research into English as an academic lingua franca (ELF) enables non-anglophone scholars to project authorial identity and reach a global readership. However, the lack of cross-disciplinary research on self-reference use in translated discourse limits our understanding of their recontextualised identity in ELF discursive community. This study investigates three self-reference categories, i.e., first-person pronouns, third-person noun phrases (NPs), inanimate NPs, in translated and non-translated English research article abstracts (RAAs) across four soft/hard vs . applied/pure disciplines: anthropology (TAN/NAN), applied linguistics (TAL/NAL), medical sciences (TMS/NMS), and chemistry (TCH/NCH). Findings show that both translated and non-translated practices favour first-person pronouns and inanimate NPs over third-person NPs, though non-translated practices consistently use more first-person pronouns. Translated practices show lower, yet uneven, authorial explicitness across disciplines. TAN shows the greatest fall in first-person pronoun use than its non-translated counterpart among all disciplines. TAL maintains similar overall self-reference use with NAL by balancing decreased first-person pronouns and increased inanimate NPs, a pattern not observed in other disciplines. Translators also neutralise certain disciplinary variation despite its presence in academic Chinese. These findings suggest constrained translator agentic practices across disciplines, offering practical and pedagogical implications for discipline-specific academic translation and interlingual scholarly communication in ELF contexts. • Translated and non-translated RAAs both prefer first-person and inanimate NP use. • Translated RAAs show lower, yet uneven, authorial explicitness across disciplines. • Translators may neutralise disciplinary variation in translated RAAs. • Findings suggest constrained translator agentic practices across disciplines.