Introduction

Although translation has been practised and discussed for millennia, systematic interest in translation at a scholarly level has emerged quite recently and a distinct discipline having translation as its core object of research may be seen to have developed only over the last three decades. One of the founding statements of translation studies is conventionally identified with James H. Holmes’ paper ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’, delivered at a conference held in Copenhagen in 1972 but only available in printed form to a wide audience several years later. This was also the paper that provided a label for the field, previously referred to, in English, with various other labels including translation theory or translatology.

Starting from the 1940s and up to the 1970s, the study of translation was commonly seen as falling within the scope of applied linguistics, a view which was also related to the attempts carried out in those years at developing machine translation systems. The basic thrust of research on translation was therefore of an applied nature, even in most of the cases where reflection was presented as having a ‘theoretical’ nature. Results of research also found application in the training institutes that were being founded, especially in Europe, as a way of responding to the increasing demand for professional translators (a true explosion in the offer of training programmes for translators and interpreters would occur, at least in Europe, in the 1990s).

Early linguistic approaches looked at translation essentially from a contrastive point of view and mainly in terms of isolated stretches of language, especially at word or sentence level. Soon, however, interest in other levels of linguistic description emerged and, based on work carried out in text linguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics, translation came to be looked at as a re-creation of texts.

In the meantime, the introduction of other disciplinary perspectives contributed to widen the scope of translation research: information theory and communication studies brought to translation an explicitly social dimension, emphasizing its nature as an action that involves other participants beside the translator (e.g. clients and readers) and is subject to considerations that go well beyond linguistic factors. In short, functional considerations at various levels were introduced in the study of translation and this represented a further move towards expanding the scope of translation research.

A strong interest in translation has traditionally been shown by literary studies and philosophy, which constitute another important source of ideas and themes that have been channelled into contemporary translation studies. Historically, discourse on translation has almost exclusively taken the form of commentaries on translation work carried out on literary and philosophical works or sacred texts (especially the Bible). Indeed, the oldest approach to translation can probably be seen to be the one based on hermeneutics, where translation is taken as a paradigm for wider problems of understanding and interpretation. Literary studies have contributed to research on translation ideas first elaborated in comparative literature and in cultural studies, ranging from notions such as that of ‘system’ or ‘norm’ to the issues linked to the representation of different cultural identities. Hermeneutic approaches, revived by poststructuralist and deconstructionist perspectives, have recently brought to the fore questions such as intertextuality and the uncontrollable polysemy of language, while at the same time continuing to investigate how translations can do justice to SL authors in spite of the incommensurability of languages – a concern felt as early as the first quarter of the 19th century, when the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher discussed whether translators should bring foreign authors to readers or whether they should lead readers to the foreign authors (his own preference was for the latter option).

James H. Holmes’ programme of research as delineated in the 1972 paper mentioned above envisaged the creation of a descriptive branch in translation studies, i.e. one studying the phenomena of

translating and translations without the largely prescriptive bias that Holmes detected in most existing research on the subject. A group of researchers coming from different backgrounds has, starting from the 1970s, worked for the development of such a branch, thus leading to one of the changes of paradigm that helped establish translation studies as an independent discipline. Descriptive approaches operated a complete reversal of perspective with respect to earlier research, focusing on translated texts as facts of the target culture and studying the socio-cultural and linguistic conditions in which these texts come about. A similar focus on constraints and influencing factors is to be found in another area that has recently received increased attention from the part of researchers, i.e. the study of the cognitive processes involved in the act of translation.

Holmes’ proposal also entailed a clear separation between the two branches of ‘pure research’ (theory and description) and the applied branch of the discipline, i.e. the one concerned with translator training, the development of translation aids and the assessment of translations. While this position has for some time met with approval in a significant section of the field, such a sharp distinction is today being called into question, and an increasing number of scholars are working on aspects that straddle Holmes’ the lines of internal disciplinary demarcation as proposed by Holmes.

Based on all of the above, the marked interdisciplinary nature of contemporary translation studies (drawing from linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, computer science and psychology, but the list is certainly incomplete) should have been made evident. For the purposes of the present work, aimed at presenting the key concepts of the discipline, such marked interdisciplinarity automatically rules out any attempt at exhaustiveness. The number of titles on translation published in the last few years and the proliferation of different perspectives and angles from which translation is being observed and researched is such that encompassing all relevant concepts and taking stock of innovative notions all in one work is an unattainable ideal. The list of key terms and concepts presented here is therefore to be regarded as necessarily selective, and certainly also

influenced by the particular perspective adopted by the author in his own research on translation. An attempt has been made, however, at ensuring that most current perspectives on translation are represented, and that at least some of their central concepts are included. At any rate, the terms and concepts presented in the book have been chosen so as to represent no more than an introductory survey of the discipline. The section called ‘Key Thinkers in Translation Studies’ presents brief sketches of the work carried out by scholars whose ideas have proved particularly influential in the recent development of the discipline. Even more than for the selection of key concepts, the inclusion of these particular scholars and not others is ultimately to be seen as a personal, subjective decision. In general, another decisive source of bias in the selection has certainly been the preference accorded to theories and research reported on in English. Finally, a decision has been taken to restrict the present survey to current research on translation and thus leave out interpreting – today probably a separate field in its own right and, as such, deserving of wider, and more competent, treatment.