New book: The Metalanguage of Translation

The Metalanguage of Translation

Edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer
University of Turku / Lessius University College, Antwerp and CETRA, University of Leuven
Benjamins Current Topics 20
2009. vi, 192 pp.
Hardbound – In stock978 90 272 2250 3 / EUR 85.00 / USD 128.00


“Let the meta-discussion begin,” James Holmes urged in 1972. Coming almost forty years later – years filled with fascinating and often unexpected developments in the interdiscipline of Translation Studies – this volume offers the reader a multiplicity of meta-perspectives, while also moving the discussion forward. Indeed, the (re)production and (re)use of metalinguistic metaphors frame and partly determine our views on research, so such a discussion is vital ­as it is in any scholarly discipline. Among other questions, the eleven contributors draw the reader’s attention to the often puzzling variations of usage and conceptualization in both the theory and the practice of translation.
First published as a special issue of Target 19:2 (2007), the volume runs the gamut of metalinguistic topics, ranging from terminology, localization and epistemological questions, through the Chinese perspective, to the conceptual mapping of the online Translation Studies Bibliography.


Table of contents

How about meta? An introduction
Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer

Defining patterns in Translation Studies: Revisiting two classics of German Translationswissenschaft
Gernot Hebenstreit

Risking conceptual maps: Mapping as a keywords-related tool underlying the online Translation Studies Bibliography
Luc van Doorslaer

Polysemy and synonymy: Their management in Translation Studies dictionaries and in translator training. A case study
Leona Van Vaerenbergh

The terminology of translation: Epistemological, conceptual and intercultural problems and their social consequences
Josep Marco

Natural and directional equivalence in theories of translation
Anthony Pym

A literary work – Translation and original: A conceptual analysis within the philosophy of art and Translation Studies
Leena Laiho

"What's in a name?": On metalinguistic confusion in Translation Studies
Mary Snell-Hornby

In defence of fuzziness
Nike K. Pokorn

The metalanguage of localization: Theory and practice
Iwona Mazur

The metalanguage of translation: A Chinese perspective
Jun Tang

Translation terminology and its offshoots
Yves Gambier

Index