Issues of explanation in translation history: An example from US–Mexican religious historiography

ABSTRACT

In recent years, Christopher Rundle has sparked methodological debates in translation history with his proposals on opposing historical paradigms, dichotomous theoretical frameworks, and seemingly incompatible audiences. This article examines critically Rundle's theses and links them to three dichotomous tensions between translation and historical studies. The contention here is that these key aspects of historical theory are tributaries to a more crucial concern of the historian, namely, the production of explanation structures. Echoing Andrew Chesterman, it is suggested that turning to causal explanation can be a positive step toward consilience regarding the unresolved dichotomous tensions between the study of history and translation. The article concludes with a survey of these issues by seeking to integrate translation phenomena in the structures of explanation pertaining to a specific case of US–Mexican religious history.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical explanation
• US-Mexican religious history
• Mormon history
• Book of Mormon translation
• translation history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Note on contributor

Samuel López-Alcalá is Assistant Professor of Spanish Translation at Brigham Young University, in Utah, United States. His main areas of research are American translation history, translation theory and translation pedagogy. He graduated from Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid, with a BA in Translation and Interpreting. He later completed his doctoral coursework in Applied Linguistics at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Spain. He holds a PhD in Social and Human Sciences with an emphasis in translation studies, as well as an Executive MBA, also from Universidad Pontificia Comillas.