Origins and conceptual analysis of the term ‘traductologie/translatology’

The term <i>traductologie</i> was coined in the early 1970s to correspond to the establishment of translation as a valid object of scientific and academic study. Its English equivalent is usually <i>translation studies</i> but sometimes translatology.<p>Traductologie has two conceptual levels: the metalevel of study and analysis and the object level of what is thus examined, namely translations and translating. Both levels are variegated. The metalevel can usefully be mapped into broad ‘paradigms’ or disciplinary approaches: literary, linguistic, semiotic, philosophical, historical, lexico-terminological, automated (MT), prescriptive and pedagogical, scientific-experimental, text and corpus oriented, process oriented, social etc. The object level is traditionally divided between written translation and oral translation (<i>interpretation</i>), and the former is often categorized by ‘text types’.<p>Permutations of the meta and object categories characterize different varieties of traductologie. When discoursing about it, one should be aware that a statement that is meaningful in one variety may be meaningless in another.<p>