Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies

To go “beyond” the work of a leading intellectual is rarely an unambiguous tribute. However, when Gideon Toury founded Descriptive Translation Studies as a research-based discipline, he laid down precisely that intellectual challenge: not just to describe translation, but to explain it through reference to wider relations. That call offers at once a common base, an open and multidirectional ambition, and many good reasons for unambiguous tribute. The authors brought together in this volume include key players in Translation Studies who have responded to Toury’s challenge in one way or another. Their diverse contributions address issues such as the sociology of translators, contemporary changes in intercultural relations, the fundamental problem of defining translations, the nature of explanation, and case studies including pseudotranslation in Renaissance Italy, Sherlock Holmes in Turkey, and the coffee-and-sugar economy in Brazil. All acknowledge Translation Studies as a research-based space for conceptual coherence and creativity; all seek to explain as well as describe. In this sense, we believe that Toury’s call has been answered beyond expectations.

Moira Inghilleri, University College London, in Target Vol. 22:2 (2010):
The contributions in Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in homage of Gideon Toury attest to the wide-ranging influence and continued active presence of Toury in the field of Translation Studies. The range of topics covered reveals the depth and breadth of the discipline of Descriptive Translation Studies, and clearly iluustrates the "open and multidirectional ambition" (p. ix) of Toury's research agenda. [...] the volume is an impressive tribute to an outstanding scholar who has dominated the field for decades and whose work will nou doubt continue to resonate within and beyound the field.