Book reviewA Companion to Translation Studies Clevedon-Buffalo-Toronto: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2007. x + 181 pp. ISBN 978-1-85359-956-9 £16,95 (Topics in Translation, 34).
Table of contents
This book is intended as a guide for students and researchers of Translation Studies (TS). Its purpose is to provide an overview of TS as it relates to relevant disciplines. The first chapter is entitled “Translation and Culture”, and the relation of TS to philosophy, linguistics, literary studies, history, and gender studies is discussed in Chapters 2 to 6. At that point the focus shifts from relevant disciplines to particular domains of the translation industry, namely screen and opera translation and translation in the political arena. The choice of disciplines and domains begs the question why, for example, psychology, technology, machine translation or interpreting studies are not included. These readily suggest themselves as relevant disciplines, and one would think of localisation, international trade and industry, the media, tourism and telecommunications as representative domains of the translation industry. In their capacity to recruit translators, these are certainly at least as powerful as, say, theatre and opera, or literature, for that matter. The editors defend their choice by saying (p. 7–8) that they did not want to follow the latest trends but to give “a sustained critical account” of those disciplines that have established themselves in TS.