Translation , Interpretation , and the Humanities Lawrence Venuti

Over the past half-century, translation studies has emerged decisively as an academic field around the world, and in recent years programs devoted to the teaching of translation have proliferated. Surveys indicate more than 350 programs worldwide (for a list periodically updated by the European Society for Translation Studies, see http://www.est-translationstudies.org/resources/tti/tti.htm). They offer a variety of certificates and degrees, undergraduate and graduate, emphasizing either practice or research or combining both, training not only professional translators but also scholar-teachers of translation and of foreign languages and literatures. The number of programs has risen not only with the expansion of the field but also with the steady increase of international organizations, the continual eruption of political and military conflicts, and the consequent displacement of mass populations, all of which create the urgent need for translators and interpreters. In multiand bilingual cultures, meanwhile, translator training has long been a necessity insofar as translation is a fact of daily life. The emergence of the field has coincided with the gradual development of a fairly standard curriculum for teaching translation studies, especially at the master’s level, where students are trained to enter the job market as translators or to proceed to doctoral research and academic careers. In the current configuration, mandatory courses (i.e., term-long units or modules in a program) focus on theory and practice, joining the study of theoretical concepts and research methods with the acquisition of practical skills in translating and interpreting. The concepts tend to be derived from varieties of linguistics, from literary and cultural studies, and from sociology; the skills are often taught in relation to specific genres or text types (legal, medical, commercial, literary, and so forth) and according to language pairs (i.e., an assortment of source and translating languages that often reflect the location of the institution). Optional courses might provide instruction in more specialized areas, such as audiovisual translation and computer-assisted translation tools, and sometimes in other, related fields, such as literary history and international politics. The variety of course offerings, as a rule, depends on the expertise of the instructors who staff the program. Translation studies now consists of a recognizable body of knowledge that is codified in a curriculum Introduction