The answer to the question whether a science or a more or less delimitated field of knowledge, like Translation Studies (TS), should need a well defined terminology, or at least a terminology that is as defined as the discourse it belongs to, should be as categorically positive as the question itself as to how many of them are needed is problematic. It is a well-known fact that terminology is at the core of a discipline’s identity. In the case of a modern discipline like TS, which has developed into and understands itself as an interdiscipline, identity in a traditional sense is under pressure. This is and even should be reflected in the relative inner soundness or unambiguousness of its terminology. This is not meant negatively: it is a necessary characteristic of a true interdiscipline, and it would only be problematic if the relative terminological soundness would find its expression in the number of its terminologies and not in its inner structure.

References

Baker, Mona (ed.)

1998, 2009 Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London, New York: Routledge.  

Kittel, Harald, Paul Armin Frank, and Norbert Greiner et al. (eds)

2004, 2007 Übersetzung. Translation. Traduction. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Übersetzungsforschung. An International Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Encyclopédie internationale de la recherche sur la traduction, 2 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter

Shuttleworth, Mark, and Moira Cowie

1997 Dictionary of Translation Studies. Manchester: St Jerome.