Federico Zanettin
Associate Professor
University of Perugia
Turns and trends in translation studies
Abstract
In this presentation I will look at a catalogue of turns which have succeeded since the inception of the discipline of translation studies some 50 years ago. I will first provide a brief description of the various turns, discuss the meaning of the concept of turn, and examine them in relation with more general turns in the humanities and social sciences. I will then try to gauge the extent to which these turns in translation studies theory are reflected in actual research trends, using as data the Translation Studies Abstract (TSA) corpus, and bibliometric measures from the Bibliography of Interpreting and Translation (BITRA), which contain abstracts and references of representative samples of books, articles and other research products published in the field of translation studies. I will conclude by considering how the extension of the meaning of the word “translation” brought about with the translational turn has affected its meaning, as competing terms have appeared to dispute the ground of its conventional conceptualization.
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