Book review
Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov, Liisa Tiitula & Maarit Koponen, eds.. Communities in Translation and Interpreting
(Vita Traductiva). Montréal: Éditions québécoises de l’œuvre, 2017. 280 pp.

Reviewed by Lucile Davier
University of Geneva
Publication history

Date received: 30 June 2017

Date accepted: 15 September 2018

Published online: 5 October 2018

Table of contents

The metaphor of the ‘lone wolf’ (cited and criticized by Hanne Jansen’s contribution to this volume) may still be part of the public image of translators and interpreters, but this edited collection of essays sets out to demonstrate the opposite: translators and interpreters are members of various intersecting communities. As Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov points out in the introduction (“Introducing communities in translation and interpreting”), this observation not only applies to recent developments in online collaborative translation, but also reflects an “age-old phenomenon” (6) as documented in translation studies history (e.g., Montgomery 2000). She opens a dialogue between references from social theory and translation studies to justify the importance of communities in translation and interpreting from ancient Bible translations to fansubbing. She provides a sound discussion of the concept of community, and more specifically of “communities of practice” (Wenger 1998), which she interestingly links to Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (1978) through the concept of ‘repertoire.’

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