The author’s interest in this paper is in making sense of Translation Studies as a particular configuration of human science. Accordingly, the term ‘science’ is considered here in the longue durée an age-old tradition of methodical enquiry leading to the development of knowledge. The main argument is that science being an evolving practice subject to conditions prevailing in the host culture, it follows that studying human-shaped events can be construed as close in nature to the shaping of the events themselves. A reflection on the evolving status of Translation Studies in the human sciences is initiated in the last section of the paper.