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date: 14 April 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article gives an overview of the evolution of translation studies and practices. Translation for much of its history has existed as a practice without a theory. The history of translation in the Western world is closely bound with the history of religion and propagation of canonical texts, particularly, the Bible. In the biense´ance period, a milestone in the study of translation in Britain came in 1791, when the essay on the Principles of Translation, was published. In the romanticism period, literal renderings became the preferred method. In the early twentieth century, in Soviet Russia, there was much innovative experimentation in arts and literature, and literary translators played active role in it. In the late twentieth century, the contemporary European translation theories are seen as a series of paradigms that question the concept of equivalence. Since about the 1950s, there has been an increasing interest in making translation theory appear scientific.

Keywords: translation studies, canonical texts, biense'ance period, romanticism period, literary translators, equivalence

Kevin Windle

Kevin Windle is an Associate Professor at the Australian National University, where he teaches Translation studies and Russian in the School of Lanugage Studies. He has translated numerous literary and scholarly works from various languages for Routlege-Harwood, Oxford University Press, Edinburgh University Press, and others. He contributed as a translator and editor to The Routledge Macedonian-English Dictionary (1998) and Our Unswerving Loyalty: A Documentary Survey of Relations between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow (2008).

Anthony Pym

Anthony Pym is Director of Postgraduate Programs in Translation and Intercultural Studies at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, and is also a Visiting Scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in the United States. He holds a Ph.D from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

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