The current concern with the notion of ‘translation universals’ seems to me a good thing. The fact that a number of authors are worried about the appropriateness of the term ‘universal’ as opposed to several other candidate terms, the fact that there is a concern with developing adequate methodological tools with which to address the issue, and the fact that a number of studies are beginning [ p. 374 ]to question earlier attempts at empirical investigation suggest to me a very healthy regard for the fundamentals of our science. We need to be worried about what our overall objective is, what we can hope to achieve, how to relate our own investigations to others and what we regard as relevant or not. Some of us, at least, need to reach a working consensus on these and related issues if we are to get anywhere at all.

References

Baker, Mona

1993 “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and applications”. Mona Baker, Gill Francis and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, eds. Text and technology: In Honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1993 233–250.  

Hansen, Gyde Kirsten Malmkjær and Daniel Gile

eds. 2004 Claims, changes and challenges in Translation Studies. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins.