What s new in Translation Studies? In offering a critical assessment of recent developments in the young discipline, this book sets out to provide an answer, as seen from a European perspective today. Many new ideas actually go back well into the past, and the German Romantic Age proves to be the starting-point. The main focus lies however on the last 20 years, and, beginning with the cultural turn of the 1980s, the study traces what have turned out since then to be ground-breaking contributions (new paradigms) as against what was only a change in position on already established territory (shifting viewpoints). Topics of the 1990s include nonverbal communication, gender-based Translation Studies, stage translation, new fields of interpreting studies and the effects of new technologies and globalization (including the increasingly dominant role of English). The author s aim is to stimulate discussion and provoke further debate on the current profile and future perspectives of Translation Studies.

Increasing attention has been paid to the agency of translators and interpreters, as well as to the social factors that permeate acts of translation and interpreting. In addition, agency and social factors are discussed in more interdisciplinary terms. Currently the focus is not only on translators or interpreters – i.e., the exploration of their inter/intra-social agency and identity construction (or on their activities and the consequences thereof), but also on other phenomena, such as the displacement of texts and people and issues of access and linguicism. The displacement of texts (whether written or oral) across time and space, as well as the geographic displacement of people, has encouraged researchers in Translation and Interpreting Studies to consider issues related to translation and interpreting through the lens of the Sociology of Language, Sociolinguistics, and Historiography. Researchers have employed a myriad of theoretical and methodological lenses borrowed from other disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Therefore, the interdisciplinarity of Translation and Interpreting Studies is more evident now than ever before. This volume, originally published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies (issue 7:2, 2012), is a perfect example of such interdisciplinarity, reflecting the shift that has occurred in Translation and Interpreting Studies around the world over the last 30 years.

This volume covers a wide range of topics in Interpreting and Translation Research. Some deal with scientometrics and the history of Interpreting Studies, arguments about conceptual analysis, meta-language and interpreters’ risk-taking strategies. Other papers are on research skills like career management, writing communicative abstracts and the practicalities of survey research. Several contributions address empirical issues such as expertise in Simultaneous Interpreting, the cognitive load imposed on interpreters by a non-native accent, the impact of intonation on interpreting quality, linguistic interference in Simultaneous Interpreting, similarities between translation and interpreting, and the relation between translation competence and revision competence. The collection is a tribute to Daniel Gile, in appreciation of his creativity and his commitment to interpreting and translation research. All the contributions in some way show his influence or are related to the models and research he has shaped.

A History of Modern Translation Knowledge is the first attempt to map the coming into being of modern thinking about translation. It breaks with the well-established tradition of viewing history through the reductive lens of schools, theories, turns or interdisciplinary exchanges. It also challenges the artificial distinction between past and present and it sustains that the latter’s historical roots go back far beyond the 1970s. Translation Studies is but part of a broader set of discourses on translation we propose to label “translation knowledge”. This book concentrates on seven processes that make up the history of modern translation knowledge: generating, mapping, internationalising, historicising, analysing, disseminating and applying knowledge. All processes are covered by 58 domain experts and allocated over 55 chapters, with cross-references. This book is indispensable reading for advanced Master- and PhD-students in Translation Studies who need background information on the history of their field, with relevance for Europe, the Americas and large parts of Asia. It will also interest students and scholars working in cultural and social history.

This is an integrated and structured set of progressive readings from translation and related disciplines, which provides a comprehensive overview of the field and how it is developing.

For decades, Translation Studies has been perceived not merely as a discipline but rather as an interdiscipline, a trans-disciplinary field operating across a number of boundaries. This has implied and still implies a considerable amount of interaction with other disciplines. There is often much more awareness of and attention to translation and Translation Studies than many translation scholars are aware of. This volume crosses the boundaries to other disciplines and explicitly sets up dialogic formats: every chapter is co-authored both by a specialist from Translation Studies and a scholar from another discipline with a special interest in translation. Sixteen disciplinary dialogues about and around translation are the result, sometimes with expected partners, such as scholars from Computational Linguistics, History and Comparative Literature, but sometimes also with less expected interlocutors, such as scholars from Biosemiotics, Game Localization Research and Gender Studies. The volume not only challenges the boundaries of Translation Studies but also raises issues such as the institutional division of disciplines, the cross-fertilization of a given field, the trends and turns within an interdiscipline.

This volume extends and deepens our understanding of Translator Studies by charting new territory in terms of theory, methods and concepts. The focus is on literary translators, their roles, identities, and personalities. The book introduces pertinent translator-centered approaches in four sections: historical-biographical studies, social-scientific and process-oriented methods, and approaches that use paratexts or translations to study literary translators. Drawing on a variety of concepts, such as identity, role, self, posture, habitus, and voice, the various chapters showcase forgotten literary translators and shed new light on some well-known figures; they examine literary translators not as functioning units but as human beings in their uniqueness. Literary Translator Studies as a subdiscipline of Translation Studies demonstrates how exploring the cultural, social, psychological, and cognitive facets of translatorial subjects contributes to a holistic understanding of translation.

Translation Studies has been defined in terms of spatial metaphors stressing the need for disciplinary border crossings, with the purpose of borrowing different approaches, orientations and tools from diverse academic fields. Such territorial incursions have resulted in a more thorough exploration of the home province, as this volume is designed to show. The interdisciplinary nature of the venture arises out of the multiplicity of terrains involved and the theoretically motivated definition of the object itself. Translation has been perceived as communication in context, hence the study of translated texts as facts of target cultures means that they need to be investigated within particular situational and sociocultural environments, an enterprise which necessarily requires the collaboration of various disciplines.This volume has grown out of a conference held at the University of Lisbon in November 2002 and collects a selection of papers that focus: on the crossdisciplinarity of Translation Studies, offering new perspectives on the current space of translation; on the importation and redefinition of theories, methodologies and concepts for the study of translation; and on the complex interplay of text and context in translation, creating dynamic interfaces with Sociology, Literary Theory, Cultural Studies, Discourse Analysis, Cultural History, among other disciplines.

History tells us that translation plays a part in the development of all cultures. Historical cases also show us repeatedly that translated works which had real social and cultural impact often bear little resemblance to the idealized concept of a ‘good translation’. Since the perception and reception of translated works — as well as the translation norms which are established through contest and/or consensus — reflect the concerns, preferences and aspirations of their host cultures, they are never static or homogenous even within a given culture. This book is dedicated to exploring some of the factors in the interplay of culture and translation, with an emphasis on translation activities outside the Anglo-European tradition, particularly in China and Japan.

In the wake of post-colonial and post-modernist thinking, ‘Eurocentrism’ has been criticized in a number of academic disciplines, including Translation Studies. First published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 6:2 (2011), this volume re-examines and problematizes some of the arguments used in such criticism. It is argued here that one should be wary in putting forward such arguments in order not to replace Eurocentrism by a confrontational geographical model characterized precisely by a continentalization of discourse, thereby merely reinstituting under another guise. The work also questions the relevance of continent-based theories of translation as such along with their underlying beliefs and convictions. But since the volume prefers to keep the debate open, its concluding interview article also provides the opportunity to those criticized to respond and provide well-balanced comments on such points of criticism.