Article published In:
Special inaugural issue: Translating the Extreme[Translation in Society 1:1] 2022
► pp. 1–14
[Translation in Society 1:1] 2022
► pp. 1–14
Where translation studies and the social meet
Setting the scene for ‘Translation in Society’
This article outlines some main developments that have led to the recent emergence of research on the ‘sociology
of translation.’ Such research adopts approaches from the broader social sciences, particularly sociology, but is also directly
related to the so-called ‘cultural turn’ within translation studies. The scope of translation research has subsequently expanded
to include cultural and power-related issues, creating common ground with the social sciences both in terms of how translation is
conceptualized and the methods used to study it. Translation has come to be understood as a socially situated relation with
difference, just as translation practitioners and researchers have been understood as complex, situated agents acting within and
across the social spheres that condition cross-cultural, multilingual exchange. This orientation opens the way for new discoveries
at the intersection of translation studies and the social sciences – work Translation in Society seeks to
advance.
Keywords: cultural turn, sociological turn, conceptualization, situatedness, social sciences, translator studies, sociology, power, networks
This article is available free of charge.
References
Angelelli, Claudia
V.
ed. 2012 The
Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Special issue
of Translation and Interpreting
Studies 7(2).
Bachleitner, Norbert, and Michaela Wolf
eds. 2004 Soziologie der literarischen Übersetzung [Sociology of literary
translation]. Special issue of IASL, Internationales Archiv für
Sozialgeschichte der deutschen
Literatur 29 (2).
Baumgarten, Stefan, and Jordi Cornellà-Detrell
2019 “General
Introduction.” In Translation and Global Spaces of
Power, edited by Stefan Baumgarten, and Jordi Cornellà-Detrell. 1–8. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Bielsa, Esperança
2013 “Translation
and the International Circulation of Literature: A Comparative Analysis of the Reception of Roberto Bolaño’s Work in Spanish
and English.” The
Translator 19 (2): 157–181. 
2021 “For
a Translational Sociology: Illuminating Translation in Society, Theory and Research.” European
Journal of Social Theory.
Bourdieu, Pierre
2002 “Les
conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées.” Actes de la Recherche en
Sciences
Sociales, 1451 (December): 3–8.
2008 “A
Conservative Revolution in Publishing.” Translation
Studies 1 (2): 123–153.
Buzelin, Hélène
2018 “Sociological
Models and Translation History.” In A History of Modern Translation
Knowledge, edited by Lieven D’hulst, and Yves Gambier. 337–346. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Buzelin, Hélène, and Claudio Baraldi
2016 “Sociology
and Translation Studies: Two Disciplines Meeting.” In Border
Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines, edited by Yves Gambier, and Luc van
Doorslaer. 117–139. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Carbó Catalan, Elisabet, and Diana Roig-Sanz
eds. Forthcoming Culture
as Soft Power. Bridging Cultural Relations, Intellectual Cooperation and Cultural
Diplomacy Berlin De Gruyter
Casanova, Pascale, and Marlon Jones
2013 “What
Is a Dominant Language? Giacomo Leopardi: Theoretician of Linguistic Inequality. New Literary
History 44 (3): 379–399.
Chesterman, Andrew
2009 “The
Name and Nature of Translator Studies.” Hermes. Journal of Language and Communication in
Business 421: 13–22.
de
Swaan, Abram
2001 Words
of the World: The Global Language
System. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Even-Zohar, Itamar
1979 “Polysystem
Theory.” Poetics
Today 1 (1/2): 287–310.
Gambier, Yves, and Luc van
Doorslaer
González
Núñez, Gabriel, and Reine Meylaerts
eds. 2017 Translation
and Public Policy. Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Case
Studies. London: Routledge.
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc
1997 “Translation
and the Shape of Things to Come: The Emergence of American Science Fiction in Post-War
France.” The
Translator 3 (2): 125–152.
Heilbron, Johan
2000 “Translation
as a Cultural World System.” Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and
Practice 8 (1): 9–26.
Heilbron, Johan, and Gisèle Sapiro
2007 “Outline
for a Sociology of Translation: Current Issues and Future
Prospects.” In Constructing a Sociology of
Translation, edited by Michaela Wolf, and Alexandra Fukari. 93–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2016 “Translation:
Economic and Sociological Perspectives.” In The Palgrave Handbook of
Economics and Language, edited by Victor Ginsburgh, and Shlomo Weber. 373–402. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Hermans, Theo
1999 Translation
in Systems. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Inghilleri, Moira
2005 “The
Sociology of Bourdieu and the Construction of the ‘Object’ in Translation and Interpreting
Studies.” The
Translator 11 (2): 125–145.
2008 “The
Ethical Task of the Translator in the Geo-Political Arena.” Translation
Studies 1 (2): 212–223.
Jakobson, Roman
1959 “On
Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On
Translation, edited by Reuben
Arthur Brower. 232–239. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jiang, Lihua, Chong Han, Jinlin Jiang, and Yue Feng
2014 “The
Sociological Turn in the Interpreter’s Role: Discourse Interpreting Filters.” Translation and
Interpreting
Studies 9 (2): 274–298.
Kaindl, Klaus
2021 “(Literary)
Translator Studies: Shaping the Field.” In Literary Translator
Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager. 1–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kinnunen, Tuija, and Kaisa Koskinen
eds. 2010 Translators’
Agency. Tampere: Tampere University Press.
Marais, Kobus, and Kalevi Kull
2016 “Biosemiotics
and Translation Studies: Challenging ‘Translation’.” In Border
Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines, edited by Yves Gambier, and Luc van
Doorslaer. 169–188. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
McMartin, Jack, and Paola Gentile
2020 “The
Transnational Production and Reception of ‘a Future Classic’: Stefan Hertmans’s War and Turpentine in Thirty
Languages.” Translation
Studies 13 (3): 271–290.
Merkle, Denise
2008 “Translation
Constraints and the ‘Sociological Turn’ in Literary Translation
Studies.” In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations
in Homage to Gideon Toury, edited by Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni. 175–186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Meylaerts, Reine
2008 “Translators
and (their) Norms.” In Investigations in Homage to Gideon
Toury, edited by Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni. 91–102. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2011 “Habitus
and Self-Image of Native Literary Author-Translators in Diglossic Societies.” Translation and
Interpreting
Studies 5 (1): 1–9.
Mossop, Brian
2016 “ ‘Intralingual
Translation’: A Desirable Concept?” Across Languages and
Cultures 17 (1): 1–24.
Pym, Anthony, and Grzegorz Chrupała
2005 “The
Quantitative Analysis of Translation Flows in the Age of an International
Language.” In Less Translated Languages, edited
by Albert Branchadell, and Lovell
Margaret West. 27–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Riggs, Ashley
2020 Stylistic
Deceptions in Online News: Journalistic Style and the Translation of
Culture. London: Bloomsbury.
Sakai, Naoki
1997 Translation
and Subjectivity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sapiro, Gisèle
2016 “How
Do Literary Works Cross Borders (or Not)? A Sociological Approach to World Literature.” Journal
of World
Literature 1 (1): 81–96.
Sapiro, Gisèle, Marco Santoro, and Patrick Baert
eds. 2020 Ideas
on the Move in the Social Sciences and Humanities: The International Circulation of Paradigms and
Theorists. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schögler, Rafael
2017 “Sociology
of Translation.” In The Cambridge Handbook of
Sociology, vol. 21, edited
by Kathleen
Odell Korgen. 399–407. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ed. 2019 Circulation
of Academic Thought: Rethinking Translation in the Academic
Field. Berlin: Peter Lang.
Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet
2005 “How
to Be a (Recognized) Translator: Rethinking Habitus, Norms, and the Field of
Translation.” Target 17 (1): 1–26.
Simeoni, Daniel
Snell-Hornby, Mary
2010 “The
Turns of Translation Studies.” In Handbook of Translation
Studies, vol. 11, edited by Yves Gambier, and Luc van
Doorslaer. 366–370. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Toury, Gideon
1980 In
Search of a Theory of Translation. Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics.
van
Doorslaer, Luc
2020 “Translation
Studies: What’s in a Name?” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural
Studies 7 (2): 139–150.
2022 “Journalism
and Translation: Overlapping Practices.” In The Routledge Handbook of
Translation and Media, edited by Esperança Bielsa. 169–182. London: Routledge.
van
Doorslaer, Luc, and Ton Naaijkens
2021 “Temporal
and Geographical Extensions in Translation Studies: Explaining the
Background.” In The Situatedness of Translation Studies: Temporal and
Geographical Dynamics of Theorization, edited by Luc van
Doorslaer, and Ton Naaijkens. 1–13. Leiden: Brill.
von
Flotow, Luise
2018 “Translation
and Cultural Diplomacy”. In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Politics, edited by Jonathan Evans and Fruela Fernandez. 193–203. London: Routledge.
Vorderobermeier, Gisella
M.
ed. 2014 Remapping
Habitus in Translation
Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Wolf, Michaela
2010 “Sociology
of Translation.” In Handbook of Translation
Studies, vol. 11, edited by Yves Gambier, and Luc van
Doorslaer. 337–343. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2014
[2012] “The Sociology of Translation and its ‘Activist
Turn’.” In The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting
Studies, edited by Claudia
V. Angelelli. 7–21. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [Previously published
in 2012 in Translation and Interpreting
Studies 7 (2)].
Wu, You