Toward a Science of Translating

Book excerpt: Toward a Science of Translating, first published in 1964, is still very much in demand today. Written by a linguist and anthropologist with forty years of experience in the field of language and religion, this work describes the major components of translating; setting the translating into the context of historical changes in principles and procedures over the last two centuries. With an emphasis on texts being understood within their cultural contexts, one of the reasons for its continuing relevance is the broad number of illustrative examples taken from field experience of translators in America, Africa, Europe and Asia.