This study into the nature and methods of present-day translation science has mainly didactic aims. The first part of the book enters into some of the theoretical aspects of translating activities. A number of different views on translating are considered and quite a few clichés are dispensed with. The author almost systematically adopts a middle course when dealing with controversies such as "translating: an art or a scientifically founded process?", or with the translatability of poetry. Álvarez Calleja believes that even though literary translation and writing are closely related, this does not necessarily make a theoretical line of approach superfluous. The author also insists on the necessarily interdisciplinary nature of translating. A translator must be an all-round expert and his knowledge would fall short if it were limited to source and target language proficiency.