Book review
Heidemarie Salevsky & Ina Müller. Translation as Systemic Interaction. A New Perspective and a New Methodology
Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2011. 366 pp.

Reviewed by Ruth Katharina Kopp
University of Heidelberg
Table of contents

Heidemarie Salevsky and Ina Müller’s book follows up extensive earlier work by Heidemarie Salevsky since 1980, much of it collected in Salevsky (1998) and Müller (2009). Throughout these earlier papers and lectures Salevsky shows a special interest in investigating nonlinear (micro-)courses of translational* processes and nonlinear correlations between cause and effect and thus in the question of which factors lead to successful or unsuccessful translations*. In contrast to other translational* approaches, she also conceptualizes translation* as “a web of effects” (p. 3 in the book under review). In other words, she understands translation* as a system on its own with numerous non static elements or variables that influence the network and change it in each specific translational* event. At that time Salevsky had neither the necessary tool(s) to investigate these nonlinear phenomena on a structural basis nor to visualize and assess them. In the book under review, however, Salevsky and her co-author Ina Müller, by using a complex computerized model initially destined for regional planning (cf. Malik 2013, 2), show how complex, nonlinear processes of translation* can be visualized and made productive for the building of a new general translation theory, suitable both in academic teaching and for use by practitioners of translation*.

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