Methodological remarks on the study of translation and translating

Abstract

Disciplinary identity depends on how the disciplinary research object is conceived of. If translation studies is a discipline studying translation and translating, it is natural that it can define its identity at the intersection between translation and translating. This intersection is translation process. The need for an epistemological description of translation process arises form the need to make the process describable or to find a possibility of its optimum description. To do this translation studies needs an elementary model of translation process that would ensure the comparability of different translations and describability of translation culture. New interest in the evaluation of translation quality and in the linguistic nature of translation brings along the necessity to reconceptualize different trends in translation studies. Translation studies is on the verge of a new self-description, and the language and attitudes of this self-description should derive from a systemic understanding of the research object of translation studies.