From translatology to studies in translation theory and practice

ABSTRACT

This article presents some of the problems that have characterized Translation Studies (TS) as an academic discipline in the past 25 years, such as its fragmentation and its commodification, as researchers have been compelled to publish in high impact journals owned by large media corporations. On the other hand, Translation Studies has expanded geographically, as training programmes have been created in countries like China, South Korea and Australia, and academically, as TS has engaged in dialogues with the academic Other. Perspectives has witnessed the evolution of the discipline and has also experienced some of the ethical problems that the TS research community has had to face during this period. The article makes very tentative and basic suggestions to curb some of the problems that have burdened journal editors in recent years. Finally, the paper introduces the varied contributions of some of the editors of the most respected journals in the discipline that have contributed to this issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Fragmentation
• interdiciplinarity
• ethical issues
• research papers
• TS journals
• editors

Acknowledgments

I would also like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions made by Marta Mateo and Lindsay Bywood to the journal. As they step down as co-editor and review editor respectively, I wish them every success in their future endeavours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Roberto A. Valdeón has published extensively on EFL and translation, and has guest-edited special issues of Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Perspectives, Meta, European Journal of Translation Studies, Across Languages and Cultures and Language and Intercultural Communication. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, US, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He has been appointed Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa, for the period 2014–2017, and is an Honorary Professor at Jinan University, Nankai University and Beijing International Studies University in China, and at the University of Stirling in the UK. His book Translation and the Spanish Empire in the Americas (Amsterdam: John Benjamins) was published in 2014. He has edited Spanish in the US: Linguistic, Translational and Cultural Aspects and is currently editing the collection Chinese Translation Studies in the 21st Century and the Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies, the three of them for Routledge. He is Editor-in-chief of Perspectives and General Editor of the Benjamins Translation Library.

ORCID

Roberto A. Valdeón http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1948-0473