The article revolves around consideration of the translator as an ‘intervenient being’. The translator as an individual or translators as a collective are placed at the centre of investigation and the author provides numerous examples of their emotional and physical struggles, sites of conflict or instability surrounding the translator(s) which have come to the forefront in Translation Studies in recent years, most notably the plight of translators and interpreters in Iraq and other areas of violent conflict. Maier points to the ‘increased interest in the translator’ to fill a perceived gap in resources (the relatively small number of accounts by and about translators) but at the same time the fact that ‘much of the material about translators’ experience of intervenience is qualitative and therefore highly subjective … making it inappropriate, even suspect, for work in certain research frameworks’. The author comments on the ‘intense, even visceral effect’ of translation on the translators and interpreters, positing the worrying possibility that the intervention in situations of deep ‘abrasion’, such as those witnessed by interpreters in interrogations in the Iraq war, ‘can cause such disease that one’s organism becomes literally (as opposed to metaphorically) diseased’. The translator, or interpreter, even those working in what are openly far more tranquil circumstances, intervenes, participates, affects and is affected physically and mentally by what he or she is doing. Following Maria Tymoczko, Maier suggests that the field of neuroscience will be a fruitful one for future translation research, to understand the function of the brain and the interaction with creativity and spirituality.