Knowledge Systems and Translation

It is generally agreed that knowledge plays an important role in translation and interpreting and that it should therefore be of central concern to translation and interpreting studies. However, there is no general agreement about what is actually meant by the term 'knowledge' in this context, nor about in exactly what ways it is relevant. Also, present-day translation and interpreting studies offer only a limited amount of research specifically dedicated to knowledge systematization and other knowledge-related issues.

This book is one of the first to systematically and exclusively address the question of knowledge in translation and interpreting. It is a collection of papers by leading scholars both from the field of translation and interpreting and from adjacent fields where knowledge also plays an important role, such as linguistics and computer science. The experts present a wide variety of conceptions of knowledge and a number of different approaches to the study of knowledge in translation and interpreting: some of them draw on concepts such as scenes and frames, mental spaces and semantic networks, some discuss knowledge systems from an ontological point of view, and some present more general concepts of knowledge in translation and interpreting. Along the same lines, some of the contributors deal mainly with theoretical and conceptual aspects, others focus on methodological issues, and again others report on empirical studies. What brings them together, however, is their common focus on the interface between knowledge and translation/interpreting, and their main achievement is that, by joining forces, they manage to present to their readers a state-of-the-art report which offers both a clearer delimitation of the concept of knowledge and a better understanding of its role in translation and interpreting.

Helle V. Dam is Assistant Professor at the Aarhus School of Business, Denmark.

Jan Engberg is Professor at the Aarhus School of Business, Denmark.

Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast is Professor at the University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany.