Translation Studies: The Integration of Uncertainty

Abstract

Translation Studies has no clearly defined parameters, and the range of contributions to the field seems to be getting ever wider. To the extent that Translation Studies has theoretical links to intercultural studies and to philosophical investigations of language, the relation between Translation Studies and translation itself becomes problematic. If Translation Studies defines itself as an intercultural discipline (emphasizing its status within other academic fields), the mental processes involved in the act of translation and the place of translation in relation to the phenomenon of language as itself a 'translator' of reality seem to raise another set of questions. The psychological aspects of translation, again, seem an impossibly subjective thing to investigate. As Gideon Toury has pointed out,