Interdisciplinarity in Translation Studies

Wolfram Wilss
Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken

This article is aimed at clarifying the concept of interdisciplinarity in Translation Studies (TS). It concentrates on three aspects of possible interdisciplinary TS research: cultural studies, psychological issues, and technological aspects (machine translation). Depending on the kind of information-processing devices which translators have, and the amount of intellectual abilities which a specific translation task requires, there will emerge a relatively realistic picture of what translational information-processing is like and which type of interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary research would secure efficient translator performance.

Table of contents

It was in 1980, if memory serves me right, that I first came across the term "interdisciplinary". At that time, Toury proposed a true "theory of translation, which obviously is interdisciplinary" (1980: 33). As a Translation Studies (TS) scholar with a particular interest in sociocultural, psychological, and technological aspects of translation, I became curious about the concept, the methodology, and the scope of this apparently new field of TS activities, but I was unable to find anything systematic written on the subject in my own [ p. 132 ]discipline, Übersetzungswissenschaft.So I adopted a wait-and-see attitude.

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