In recent years the marginal position which has defined translators and their texts has come under increasing and sustained challenge. However, although translation and subjectivity has been thoroughly considered in terms of post-colonialism and post-structuralism, there are few discussions which focus specifically on the construction of "Englishness" through vernacular translation. Using a range of theoretical approaches the five essays in this volume aim to realise such an understanding of translation by critically analyzing the cultural and political implications of translation and the construction of English subjectivities at particular historical moments.
Translation into a non-mother tongue or inverse translation, especially of literary texts, has always been frowned upon within Translation Studies in Western cultures and regarded by literary scholars and linguists as an activity of dubious worth, doomed to fail. The study, which received an award from EST in 2001, sets out to challenge the established view and to critically question some of the axiomatic assumptions of Western theorists.
Over the past decade interest in research on screen translation has increased sharply while at the same time fast moving technological breakthroughs are continually modifying and renewing both products and well-established methods of linguistic mediation. Thus, as more scholars choose to devote their energies to investigating this multi-faceted field, there is an ever-growing need to map out where the discipline stands and where it is going in terms of research.
To go “beyond” the work of a leading intellectual is rarely an unambiguous tribute. However, when Gideon Toury founded Descriptive Translation Studies as a research-based discipline, he laid down precisely that intellectual challenge: not just to describe translation, but to explain it through reference to wider relations. That call offers at once a common base, an open and multidirectional ambition, and many good reasons for unambiguous tribute.
The view of translation as a socially regulated activity has opened up a broad field of research in the last few years. This volume deals with central questions of the new domain and aims to contribute to the conceptualisation of a general sociology of translation. Interdisciplinary in approach, it discusses the role of major representatives of sociology like Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Bernard Lahire, Anthony Giddens or Niklas Luhmann in establishing a theoretical framework for a sociology of translation.
