For the discourse of localization, translation is often "just a language problem". For translation theorists, localization introduces fancy words but nothing essentially new. Both views are probably right, but only to an extent. This book sets up a dialogue across those differences. Is there anything that translation theory can gain from localization? Can localization theory learn anything from the history and complexity of translation? To address those questions, both terms are placed within a more general frame, that of text transfer. Texts are distributed in time and space; localization and translation respond differently to those movements; their relative virtues are thus brought out on common ground.
Anthony Pym here reviews not only key problems in translation theory, but also critical concepts such as cultural resistance, variable transaction costs, segmentation of the labour market, and the dehumanization of technical discourse. The book closes with a plea for the humanizing virtues of translation, over and above the efficiencies of localization.

Christine Pagnoulle, University of Liège, Belgium, in Perspectives, Vol. 13:4 (2005):
Pym's latest book is a significant contribution to a clear and comprehensive view of what translating means today, in a perspective that combines the most recent developments and long view which takes us back to the Elephantine dragomen. It charts the various processes involved and what it means for all agents and partners, and it sets out explicitly what ethical priorities should never be left out. A rare object in the field of Translation Studies, it is unimpeachably scholarly, and it is also (in its restrained Anglo-Saxon way) passionately committed.