The Metalanguage of Translation

Book excerpt: 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."