The invisible ubiquity of philosophy in translation studies: towards a re-articulation of the discipline’s relationship with philosophy

ABSTRACT

The relationship between philosophy, translation, and translation studies has not been explicitly articulated. This article starts from the premise that philosophy is foundational to any academic discipline, and translation studies can critically reflect on itself by engaging its object of study and foundations philosophically. Three distinctions are offered as possible ways of articulating the relationship between translation studies and philosophy: (1) Philosophically informed research in translation studies / Philosophy of translation; (2) Philosophy of translation / Philosophy of translation studies; and (3) Philosophy as an imported doctrine / Disciplinary philosophizing. While philosophy of translation asks what translation is (ontology), philosophy of translation studies examines how we can know about translation (epistemology). The proposed distinctions ascribe philosophical agency to translation studies scholars and presuppose that philosophy can also emerge from within translation studies through disciplinary philosophizing. The proposed distinctions enable addressing ontological and epistemological underpinnings of translation studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation studies
• philosophy
• philosophy of translation
• philosophy of translation studies
• epistemology
• ontology

Introduction

In recent years, translation studies has seen a proliferation of attempts to establish links between translation and philosophy (e.g. Blumczynski 2016; Marais 2014; Meylaerts and Marais 2023; Pym 2007; Rawling and Wilson 2019; Tymoczko 2007; Weissbrod 2009). The discipline is generally becoming increasingly self-reflective and interested in its own development (Basalamah 2019, 480; Tymoczko 2007, 19). In some subfields of translation studies, for example Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies, more concerted efforts to address subfield-specific philosophical underpinnings and the related epistemological challenges have already been made (Halverson and García 2022). Recent scholarship has also displayed a growing interest in the expressly philosophical problematic of translation studies as a whole and there have been some attempts to initiate a wider movement that stirs some foundational elements of the discipline. For example, Kobus Marais (2014) has called for inquiry into the epistemological underpinnings of translation studies, urging researchers to problematize the lens through which translation studies looks at reality, and Salah Basalamah (2019) envisions the possibilities of establishing a new sub-discipline within translation studies which would address questions of epistemology.

However, the overall picture of the links between philosophy, translation, and translation studies continues to be fragmentary, and the discussion on the role of philosophy within the discipline is ongoing. In addition, it remains unclear whether all of the research in translation studies conducted (in one way or another) in the name of philosophy actually “amounts to a philosophy” (Basalamah 2019, 480). Then again, it has not been explicitly clarified what kind of thinking scholars in translation studies – who rarely are also philosophers – should adopt to engage the discipline and its object of study philosophically.

In scholarly contributions to the field of translation studies, philosophy appears fragmentary: we often read that scholars are “turning to fragments of philosophical discourses” (Pym 2007, 36), or that philosophy of translation “only exists in fragments” (Basalamah 2019, 478), or even that “translation studies as a field of study lacks a philosophical underpinning” (Marais 2014, 16). In this article, I adopt a different view and argue that statements such as the ones mentioned above reflect the fact that we have not become sufficiently aware of the role of philosophy within translation studies and, thus, philosophy has remained largely invisible within the discipline. An academic discipline such as translation studies is not separated from philosophy, but the discipline may ignore its own philosophical foundations or otherwise remain unaware of them because philosophical discussion is not considered a prerequisite for successful research in translation studies. However, if we focus our attention on these foundations, i.e. engage the discipline philosophically, we can make the discipline’s links to philosophy more explicit.

To contribute to the discussion on the links between philosophy, translation, and translation studies, this article offers prospects for re-articulating the discipline’s relationship with philosophy by proposing three distinctions that will be outlined below. The proposed distinctions partly overlap with what has been done in translation studies before, but, essentially, they also introduce new perspectives from which we can think about the links between philosophy, translation and translation studies. Most importantly, I introduce to the discussion a new perspective which makes a distinction between philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies. Another new perspective introduced here is that philosophy need not necessarily be imported into translation studies from the outside but it can also emerge from within the discipline through the activity of disciplinary philosophizing by translation studies scholars.

A word needs to be said about the “invisible ubiquity of philosophy in translation studies” referred to in the title of this article. Here, I understand philosophy as a meta-discipline (or a second-order discipline) – one that engages in the study of other (first-order) disciplines. Conceived of as a meta-discipline, philosophy is related to philosophy of science and philosophies of other disciplines. Any discipline – including translation studies – may become an object of study for philosophy as a meta-discipline. As a meta-discipline, philosophy can address metatheories of other disciplines. Metatheory can be defined as a theory the subject matter of which is another theory. To take an example, in translation studies, metatheoretical engagement at the level of the discipline as a whole has been called for by Blumczynski and Hassani (2019) who draw attention to the dichotomous and polarized nature of many long-standing theories of translation that tend to be structured around binary oppositions or continua and significantly reduce the complexity of translation as a phenomenon. While the concept of metatheory can be understood as referring to analysis of other theories with the objective of developing higher level theories about them, in the present article, I am using it in a philosophical sense, and when I use the expression metatheoretical assumptions I refer to a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying – and structuring – our articulations of our research approaches. The kind of philosophical engagement called for in this article is reflection on our ways of thinking about translation and doing research in order to lay bare the metatheoretical assumptions underlying our conceptions of translation and the concepts, theories and methods we use to address our objects of research in translation studies. Philosophy, then, provides a lens through which the field of translation studies can engage in an examination of its own engagement with its object of study and the underlying set of prior assumptions that create the conditions of possibility for building theories within translation studies in the first place. By doing so we can become more aware of the discipline’s ontological and epistemological underpinnings. At the most fundamental level, we are concerned with assumptions about the nature of the world, reality and knowing that inform our thinking and actions as scholars in translation studies.

More generally, I suggest that instead of treating philosophy as one theme among others within translation studies – as if there were translation studies that is “philosophy-free” and translation studies that is addressing philosophical questions – we should at least acknowledge that metatheoretical assumptions implicitly frame our knowledge construction efforts, whether or not we as researchers decide to address them. I suggest that we should view philosophy as foundational to translation studies and begin to re-articulate the discipline’s relationship with philosophy. This requires framing philosophical thinking as an ordinary – and essential – activity in the translation studies scholars’ work instead of seeing it as a concern of those who decide to engage in philosophical reflection. By this I mean that although we may – and often do – consciously decide not to engage in philosophical reflection on the metatheoretical assumptions underlying our research approaches, bracketing them does not mean that the approaches are free from such assumptions. Rather, even when these assumptions remain unacknowledged, they continue to structure our understandings of the phenomenon under study by privileging some ways of knowing while putting some others out of bounds.

The kind of philosophical engagement proposed here is concerned with different questions than those asked by first-order disciplines. When we do research in translation studies, we choose certain concepts, theories and methods because we believe that by using them we can construct valid knowledge of our object of study. We do not – and do not have to – constantly question the premises of our research work. However, this is precisely what philosophical inquiry questions: the approaches we use to study phenomena can, any time, become an object of philosophical inquiry. Then we are dealing with a different set of questions that do not seek to explain phenomena or to establish bodies of knowledge, but rather to make us aware of the ways in which our research approaches implicitly structure our ways of thinking and knowing.

The three distinctions proposed here are not intended to explain translational phenomena. Rather, they are offered as tools of thought that are intended to enable new articulations that potentially motivate us to think about and act with translational phenomena in new ways. The three distinctions are simply offered as some possible ways of conceiving of the links between translation, translation studies and philosophy. Further, I argue that scholars in translation studies have philosophical agency and can contribute to the development of philosophy of translation and philosophy of the discipline of translation studies. According to the view presented here, philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies are an ongoing joint effort of all past, present and future thinkers and scholars on translation.

The relationship between philosophy, translation, and translation studies through three distinctions

Anthony Pym distinguishes three main ways in which philosophy may be related to translation studies:

1. Philosophers of various kinds have used translation as a case study or metaphor for issues of more general application.

2. Translation theorists and practitioners have referred to philosophical discourses for support and authority for their ideas.

3. Philosophers, scholars and translators have commented on the translation of philosophical discourses. (Pym 2007, 24)

A similar division has been adopted in the recent Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy (Rawling and Wilson 2019) intended as an overview of the links between philosophy and translation. However, the organization of the book also acknowledges the fact that some recent and emerging approaches to the relationship between philosophy and translation overflow these categories, and these contributions are grouped under the section Emerging trends. A recent special issue of the journal Perspectives entitled Philosophy in/on Translation edited by Alice Leal and Philip Wilson also uses Pym’s abovementioned categorization as a starting point and adds a fourth category, namely one that, in a Derridean vein, conceives of the link between translation and philosophy in terms of co-dependence. This idea is crystallized in the quotation “Translation is philosophy and philosophy is translation; the implications of (un)translatability shape the very notion of philosophy” (Leal and Wilson 2023, 2–3). In addition to these contributions, which are using and expanding on Pym’s categorization and bring together multiple perspectives of several authors, there have been some individual contributions that have illuminated the links between translation, translation studies, and philosophy more broadly at the disciplinary level and represent an aspiration towards transforming the foundations of the discipline. It is to some of these cutting-edge contributions that the present article will turn in more detail with the objective of discussing the current state of the study of the links between philosophy and translation.

The three distinctions proposed in this article relate only to Pym’s second category referred to above. Discussion on translation of philosophical texts (cf. Pym’s third category) has been intentionally omitted because this way of seeing the interconnectedness of translation and philosophy positions philosophy as a special field of translation, while the focus here will be on the ways in which the concept of translation and translation studies can be engaged philosophically. Also, this article concerns the disciplinary perspective of translation studies and, thus, it will not address contributions related to translation that have been made in the field of philosophy proper (cf. Pym’s first category mentioned above), although the volume of such inquiry is enormous and of considerable relevance to translation studies (see e.g. Tymoczko 2019). Before embarking on the discussion in more depth, the three distinctions introduced in this article will be outlined below.

The first distinction

The first distinction concerns the difference between what can be understood as philosophically informed research in translation studies and philosophy of translation. Here, philosophically informed research in translation studies means research referring to and using philosophical ideas or concepts to address particular problems or questions related to translation (see e.g. Pym 2007, 33–40), i.e. application of philosophical ideas to research in translation studies. The essential difference between philosophically informed research in translation studies and philosophy of translation lies in the distinction of first- and second-order study. Philosophically informed research in translation studies is a first-order activity that can become an object of second-order reflection – philosophizing as a meta-level activity as described above. However, the way of linking philosophy and translation that is here referred to as philosophically informed research in translation studies is not, strictly speaking, philosophy, but research in translation studies that is using philosophy to support and illustrate specific points or to illuminate aspects of translation or translation studies. There is an extensive body of such research in translation studies, and as Maria Tymoczko (2019, 173) has pointed out, “translation studies deals with many of the same concerns and problems that engage philosophers”, which is to mutual advantage of both fields.

Philosophy of translation can be seen as distinct from philosophically informed research in translation studies. Philosophy can be defined as

The study of the most general and abstract features of the world and categories with which we think: mind, matter, reason, proof, truth etc. In philosophy, the concepts with which we approach the world themselves become the topic of inquiry. (Blackburn 2008, 275)

This definition serves as a starting point but it is necessary to add that while philosophy seeks understandings, its task is not to put one understanding before others. All it can do is to show us that there indeed are different ways of understanding and make an effort to show their justification – to lay out their strengths and weaknesses. However, this kind of an inquiry is unable to achieve “closure” or “progress” in the sense that the understandings gained are not final but always up for further revision. This may, for some, mean that philosophy is useless because it is unable to establish bodies of knowledge, but here, I suggest that philosophical engagement can be useful for scholars in translation studies precisely because it involves envisioning alternative ways of thinking about things and can, thus, lead to new insights into what translation is or could be. These insights may lead us to rethink our approaches and to do something differently.

Philosophy of translation, thus, means philosophizing about the concept of translation, that is exploring the foundations of the concept of translation and its ontological status. Philosophy of translation is not concerned with solving any specific research problems of translation studies or with promoting any particular way of solving such problems. Rather, philosophy of translation is primarily concerned with elaborating the significance of such problems from the perspective of translation and translation studies. In this process, we keep asking what it means to adopt a certain view of translation, and philosophy is guiding our thinking towards new insights instead of providing final explanations.

The second distinction

The second distinction distinguishes between philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies. To my knowledge, this distinction has not been explicitly made in translation studies, and further clarification regarding what constitutes philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies is thus needed. The main difference between the two is that while philosophy of translation asks what translation is (ontology), philosophy of translation studies examines how we can know about translation (epistemology). So far, most of the debates within translation studies have been concerned with philosophy of translation, i.e. study of the nature – or concept – of translation, but a number of scholars have also engaged in negotiation of the discipline’s boundaries and identity. For example, the currently ongoing transdisciplinarity discussion frames the concept of translation in a very broad sense, and the ideas introduced in this context could, in principle, be applicable to any discipline where translation is a relevant concept. The idea of ubiquitous translation (Blumczynski 2016) and translationality (Blumczynski 2023; Robinson 2017) illustrate the breadth of the transdisciplinarity discussion and the related concept of translation. The idea that translation is ubiquitous in the sense of being a universal medium for grasping the world may also offer key insights for other disciplines if they begin to think about translation from this transdisciplinary perspective.

I introduce a new perspective into the discussion about disciplinarity and suggest that we could glean some additional understandings by adopting a perspective of philosophy of translation studies – as a philosophy of a discipline. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy offers the following definition: “A philosophy of a discipline such as history, physics, or law, seeks not so much to solve historical, physical or legal questions, as to study the concepts that structure such thinking and to lay bare their foundations and presuppositions” (Blackburn 2008, 275). Thus, philosophy of translation studies is different from philosophy of translation in that it poses questions from the perspective of a philosophy of a discipline with the objective of continuously examining, reflecting on and questioning the discipline’s own foundations and its epistemological status. This kind of thinking, which is essentially concerned with philosophizing about our own scholarly engagement with translation, opens up a new set of problems for the discipline to examine. What becomes the object of philosophizing is our choice of research perspectives, concepts, theories and methods to study translation in order to illuminate the foundations and presuppositions underlying our ways of constructing knowledge.

Translation studies is quintessentially related to other disciplines. It has been defined as an interdiscipline (e.g. Gentzler 2014; Tymoczko 2007, 52), a post-discipline (e.g. Arduini and Nergaard 2011; Gentzler 2014) and “a rhizomatic transdiscipline” (Blumczynski 2016, 167), and Cardozo (2020) draws attention to the relational nature of translation, i.e. the fact that translation is so profoundly defined by relationality that it can be thought of as ontologically relational, which also means that translation – and the discipline of translation studies – are always already related to other disciplines. By virtue of its relational nature, translation studies comprises a multitude of different approaches, strands, and schools, which all have a multiplicity of research worldviews – and thus their particular epistemological frameworks, or ideas of how knowledge about translation can be constructed. This diversity makes translation studies a rich platform for philosophical inquiry and philosophy of translation studies particularly interesting as a philosophy of a discipline. What I mean here is that when philosophizing about our scholarly engagement in translation studies we philosophize about our ways of studying translational phenomena. It is not merely about pointing out contrasts between different research approaches at the surface level, because we already know that some approaches focus more on certain aspects of the same phenomenon than others. What I want to emphasize is that when we begin to, say, compare different research approaches in translation studies by philosophizing about them – by engaging in second-order reflection on our first-order research activities in translation studies in order to lay bare their underlying ontological and epistemological assumptions – we begin to see more clearly that the different approaches take different facts as relevant, they have different assumptions, e.g. about what should be covered and accounted for, what can be regarded as an explanation, and what is acceptable methodology. This kind of an inquiry helps us outline large conceptual wholes and connections within translation studies and between translation studies and other disciplines. For example, this kind of philosophizing helps us to begin to see the ways in which conceptions held within different research traditions are structured and differ from each other. Philosophical inquiry can highlight the differences between the epistemological frameworks underlying different research approaches in translation studies and can thus point towards new epistemological issues for translation studies and provide new insights into old ones. This kind of investigation into our efforts to know is fundamentally linked to our ideas of what constitutes valid knowledge.

I believe that this kind of philosophizing can help scholars in translation studies to critically examine their own scholarly engagement, and the field of translation studies to explore its relationship with its object of study in a wider sense. The way I understand philosophy also includes the possibility of questioning the nature of the discipline of translation studies itself, its boundaries and even its very existence. However, as Basalamah (2019, 486) has noted, “we still work in a disciplinary research context, and transdisciplinarity cannot for the time being be dismissive of disciplines”. While we are working within a discipline referred to as translation studies, we can still acknowledge its widest possible transdisciplinary reach and envision change.

Philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies are interrelated and influence each other. While the former addresses questions of ontology, the latter is concerned with epistemology. Epistemology and ontology should be viewed as interrelated in that epistemology determines the relationship between the knower and reality on the basis of ontological assumptions. Thus, our conception of what translation is influences our choice of concepts, theories, and methods to study translation, and similarly, our choice of concepts, theories, and methods influences how we conceive of the nature of translation (for a discussion on epistemological and ontological positions in translation studies, see e.g. Blumczynski and Sadler 2023; García Marín 2023). By engaging the disciplinary perspectives of translation studies philosophically we can lay bare and gain insight into the ontological and epistemological assumptions underpinning our conceptions of what translation is and how we can know about it.

The third distinction

The third distinction emphasizes the difference between philosophy as an imported doctrine and disciplinary philosophizing. The former is a more or less finished set of beliefs, or a body of teachings, coming from outside translation studies and incorporated into the discipline. The latter refers to philosophy as an activity of philosophizing by scholars in translation studies, i.e. acts of philosophizing that originate from within the discipline of translation studies.

Philosophical doctrines have been created by scholars or thinkers established within the discipline of philosophy, and such doctrines can be adopted and followed by scholars in translation studies. Adopting the philosophy as an imported doctrine view would mean looking at some area of translation studies through the lens of a philosophy developed by one thinker or a group of thinkers with similar ideas, or a specific philosophical tradition. Also, as distinct from philosophically informed research in translation studies, which was mentioned above under the first distinction, here importing a philosophical doctrine does not involve mere “fragments of philosophical discourses” (Pym 2007, 36) that offer support or authority for individual studies on translational phenomena, but can represent a more fundamental change in the philosophical thinking within, at least, a specific area of the discipline. In translation studies, Clive Scott’s (2012) approach to phenomenology of literary translation, as elaborated in his book Translating the Perception of Text, is an example of introducing a philosophical doctrine, Maurice-Merleau Ponty’s phenomenology, to the context of literary translation. Scott points out that he is not an expert in phenomenology but a translator who already feels that the translation practice is phenomenological and seeks to explore this idea further:

I am writing from the position not of a student of phenomenology but of a practicing translator, a translator whose approach to translation has become increasingly phenomenological by persuasion, and who wishes to give a clearer definition to the assumptions and procedures which underpin that translational practice […] (Scott 2012, 1)

The question that interests him is: “how should I handle language in such a way that the experience of (reading) the source text (ST) can emerge” and, by introducing phenomenological thinking to the context of literary translation, Scott seeks to “see more clearly into the phenomenological condition, and to develop and formulate its insights in the direction of a translational practice”. The scope of Scott’s approach is literary translation, but its wider relevance to the field of translation studies could also become an object of further inquiry.

In the sense meant here, disciplinary philosophizing is a view that assigns an even more active role to scholars in translation studies in engaging translation and translation studies philosophically. According to this view, disciplinary philosophizing emerges from within the discipline instead of being brought into the discipline from the outside. Here, however, it must be noted that, given the relational nature of translation referred to above, the idea of something being “inside” or “outside” the discipline does not refer to the necessity of establishing a strict disciplinary demarcation between translation studies and other disciplines, but the distinction rather ascribes philosophical agency also to scholars in translation studies, although they are not specialists in philosophy. If we, for example, think about the role of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology as discussed by Scott (2012) in translation studies, the philosophy as an imported doctrine view would see it as a philosophy of translation, capable of addressing translational phenomena at least in the domain of literary translation, and perhaps even capable of transforming thinking within some other areas in translation studies. Another example is Marais’s (2019) book A (Bio)semiotic Theory of Translation in which he presents a particular philosophical position – process philosophy – combined with, or underlying, his complexity theory approach to semiotics and translation theory.

In contrast, instead of subscribing to one philosophical doctrine, the disciplinary philosophizing view acknowledges the philosophical complexity of translation studies, i.e. the idea that philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies stem from multiple sources and translation studies scholars can even invent or develop new philosophies.

The disciplinary philosophizing view entails embracing the idea of philosophizing not being restricted to the discipline of philosophy proper, i.e. philosophy created by established thinkers within philosophy and scholars with a formal education in philosophy, and encourages framing philosophizing as an activity taking place in a variety of contexts and at varying degrees of awareness and explicitness also in other disciplinary contexts than that of philosophy proper. In the context of translation studies, the philosophical perspective is, however, not a general perspective, but rather that of a scholar in a specialist field of research. Those involved in the discipline of translation studies – generally non-philosophically trained translation scholars – engage philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies from a different perspective than those with a formal education in philosophy but not in translation studies. Thus, it can be stated that the perspectives of philosophers on translation and the perspectives of translation studies scholars who engage in the activity of philosophizing complement each other.

In the next section, I will briefly review some of the major recent approaches to translation from a philosophical or philosophically informed perspective that have inspired this article.

Some recent translation studies approaches related to philosophy

In translation studies, reference to philosophical ideas when discussing the problematic of translation from various research perspectives consists of a number of scattered and atomistic contributions, the aims of which are seldom expressly philosophical. As Pym has noted, scholars in translation studies have often used philosophical ideas with the objective of addressing specific research problems, and not with an intention to transform the discipline more broadly:

It seems more the case that translation theorists concerned were turning to fragments of philosophical discourses not in order to legitimize any systematic analytic approach, but as part of an attempt to solve isolated and often long-standing problems. (Pym 2007, 36)

While such contributions are a valuable addition to discussion on some aspects of the problematic of translation, if we want to engage translation in a philosophically informed or philosophical way at the level of the discipline itself, we must look beyond what seems to be one of the main limitations of approaches addressing isolated problems of translation: the fact that they tend to reduce the relationship between translation and philosophy to a set of seemingly unrelated examples or perspectives. This makes philosophy little more than a pool from which translation studies can draw examples to illustrate its own debates. Such approaches fail to address the fact that each individual study is part of and plays a role in forming the philosophical underpinnings of the discipline. Thus, such contributions do not significantly widen, alter or transform the reach of philosophically informed or philosophical thought within translation studies.

However, some recent contributions have introduced ideas that have wider relevance with regard to the links between philosophy and translation and the discipline as a whole. So far, no distinction between philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies has been made, and thus, the existing approaches have been grouped under the general category of “philosophy of translation”. In my view, however, some of the existing approaches seem to fall more neatly into the category of philosophy of translation, while others – although not stating it explicitly – seem to anticipate a philosophy of translation studies as a philosophy of a discipline.

Maria Tymoczko’s (2007) research on the different conceptualizations of translation, the objective of which has been to encourage scholars to probe for an enlarged concept of translation – one that opens up the field of research to the richness of phenomena related to translation – has inspired a great deal of self-reflective discussion in translation studies. While Tymoczko does not expressly present her research as a contribution to philosophy of translation or philosophy of translation studies, her work can be seen as related to philosophy in that it begins to address and unravel the conceptual basis of translation, and provides many starting points for further philosophical inquiry, as will be pointed out below.

Piotr Blumczynski (2016) adopts a novel view of translation and, instead of seeing a need to enlarge the concept of translation as called for by Tymoczko, suggests that translation is already a ubiquitous concept found across disciplines and can thus be best conceived of within an epistemological transdisciplinary paradigm. His method involves re-examination of texts written by scholars working within philosophy and other disciplines across the humanities by “applying a translational interpretant” (38) to these texts with the objective of gaining new insights into the nature of translation. In practice, he presents excerpts from texts written by philosophers and other scholars and then engages in a thought experiment on – or a rethinking of – these passages by substituting one core concept in each of them with the word “translation” in order to see what new insights into the nature of translation this activity might bring. He calls his method reconceptualization (45). Through his method, Blumczynski demonstrates the affinity of the concept of translation and several core concepts in the humanities, pointing towards the shared “translational” underpinnings of translation studies and other disciplines. The objective of Blumczynski’s approach is to gain insights into translation at the foundational, transdisciplinary level through thinking about translation, and by extension the role of translation studies, in terms of their similarity with other concepts and disciplines. His work convincingly shows that translation studies is a “rhizomatic transdiscipline” (167), and as I understand it, it points towards both an ontology and epistemology of ever-changing relations and seeks similarity between translation studies and other disciplines while also entailing the possibility of unexpected discovery.

In his book Translation Theory and Development Studies: A Complexity Theory Approach, Kobus Marais (2014) sets out to provide a philosophical underpinning to translation studies. Anticipating what is here referred to as a philosophy of translation studies, he points out that “one of the problems with conceptualizing translation and translation studies is that it is not done with due consideration of epistemology and the epistemological and/or philosophical assumptions prevalent in thought in translation studies” (74). Building on the ideas put forward by Tymoczko (2007), Marais (2014, 76) convincingly argues that translation studies should move beyond mere conceptualizations of the phenomenon translation and, instead, conceptualize the entire field of translation studies, i.e. define the lens through which the discipline looks at reality. However – and this is the point where I cannot agree with him – he then goes on to propose complexity theory as the overarching philosophical framework for translation studies. He believes that this framework could accommodate the entire roster of translational phenomena – including what he refers to as “reductionist” approaches to translation – such as those based on the binary oppositions ubiquitous in contemporary thought, e.g. “capitalism versus socialism, empire versus postcolonialism, globalization versus localization” (114), as well as the tendency of translation studies to organize its epistemology in the form of a series of “turns” (77).

Complexity theory introduced to translation studies by Marais (2014) holds theoretical promise for the discipline. It has already been investigated further and its relevance to translation studies has been shown in several later works (see e.g. Marais 2019; Marais and Meylaerts 2019; Marais and Meylaerts 2022). My purpose here, however, is not to discuss the applicability of complexity theory to translation studies. Rather, I will focus particularly on Marais’s 2014 book Translation Theory and Development Studies: A Complexity Theory Approach, which – although I maintain that Marais’s proposed approach is not a philosophy – I see as relevant in the study of the relationships between translation, translation studies, and philosophy in that it manages to present some fundamental insights that can inform further investigations into the subject. The discussion continues in the following section.

The first of these insights is that we should problematize the lens through which translation studies looks at reality and turn our inquiry to the epistemological underpinnings of translation studies (Marais 2014). While I think that problematizing the lens of translation studies takes the inquiry towards the philosophical, what I find deeply problematic is that complexity theory is offered as “the lens” – as a philosophy of translation. A point that has been brought up by e.g. Basalamah (2019, 479–480) is that complexity theory is not a philosophy in the proper sense of the term, but a theory. This is also suggested by the title of Marais’s (2014) book: Translation Theory and Development Studies: A Complexity Theory Approach. Re-examining existing theories through the lens of other theories helps frame the problematic of any discipline in new ways and may lead to new insights, but a theory cannot function as a philosophy. In Marais’s work, complexity theory is sometimes referred to as a “philosophy”, sometimes as a “theory”, and sometimes as “complexity thinking”, which also appear in later works on the relationship between complexity theory and translation studies (see e.g. Marais and Meylaerts 2019; Marais and Meylaerts 2022), and in his 2019 book, Marais refers to “process philosophy” as underlying his (bio)semiotic theory of translation. Or, perhaps complexity theory can be thought of as a metatheoretical framework, a system under which the myriad of phenomena researchers grapple with within translation studies and the multiplicity of perspectives and epistemological frameworks through which researchers actually examine phenomena are subsumed. However, I stress again that the conception of philosophy underlying Marais’s 2014 book differs from mine in ways that I will set out to clarify in the next section. First, however, I will discuss some aspects of complexity theory (as a theory) to give the reader an idea of my interpretation of it.

Marais makes the assertion that complexity theory would allow us to consider and respect “both similarity and difference, stability and change, one and many, necessity and contingency” (2014, 105). However, accommodating contradictory and competing views and perspectives under a single framework is not an unproblematic endeavor. What I find challenging about framing the epistemology of translation studies in the way proposed by Marais is that his complexity approach to translation and translation studies is presented as a general – or even the only – lens applicable to translation and translation studies as a whole. The proposed lens is allegedly capable of studying “all of reality” (97) – and it somehow manages to avoid “reductionism” for which it criticizes virtually all existing translation studies approaches. Thus, seen through the “superlens” of complexity theory, the rest of the approaches (let us call them “sublenses”) in translation studies appear inadequate at the outset. While implying that it is generally relatively unconcerned with power relations, or at least downplays their role, complexity theory as described by Marais simultaneously seems to position itself as the only approach with power to theorize translation and translation studies that somehow lies beyond criticism – or above the rest of the approaches. However, it must be pointed out that decision not to engage with complexity theory does not automatically mean that an approach is reductionist or that complexity of translation is (or has previously been) ignored in translation studies.

I wish to stress again that the purpose of the above discussion is not to question the relevance of complexity theory (as a theory) in translation studies, and as has been pointed out above, its relevance has already been shown in several recent works. My intention here has rather been to provide some background to the discussion in the next section. To summarize, the reason why complexity theory cannot function as a philosophy of translation or a philosophy of translation studies is that it imposes a system – a set of rules – that we are expected to accept and to adhere to. Philosophy, as I understand it, is not a system but a manner of thinking I will discuss in more detail in the next section.

Through the lens of philosophy: outlining the relationship between philosophy and translation studies

The invisibility of philosophy in translation studies becomes particularly evident in the work of some scholars who are discussing links between translation and philosophy. Marais (2014, 16) argues that translation studies as a field of study lacks philosophical underpinnings. His view implies that a philosophical underpinning of translation studies does not exist yet but can be provided. I find this idea problematic because the very idea of “having” or “not having” a philosophical underpinning implies that there is, or could be, a system – a set of rules – to settle on and to live by. The way I understand philosophy is different. I will try, again, to put it into words, this time by quoting John Shand (2017, 292): “The value of philosophy – its point – is to give the full array of alternatives, to lay them out with a serious determination that nothing is beyond question, showing the rational consequences of adopting one view rather than another”. This kind of thinking cannot involve creating systems that seek to exert control over something, but rather it encourages openness of thinking in the broadest possible sense. It is this kind of thinking that I want to encourage in the present article.

Although my view of philosophy clearly differs from that underlying Marais’s (2014) work, I still find further valuable points in Marais’s work that are worth exploring. It is precisely through the following quotation that I have arrived at the insight of establishing philosophy of translation studies as a philosophy of the discipline. Marais writes:

What one does not find is a philosophy of translation as one would with a philosophy of history or a philosophy of mathematics. As I understand it, when the question, “What is x?” is asked of a field of study, x, one moves into the domain of philosophy or philosophy of science. (2014, 16).

As the passage quoted above suggests, Marais compares philosophy of translation with philosophy of history and philosophy of mathematics. However, philosophy of history and philosophy of mathematics can simultaneously refer both to a philosophy of a discipline and a philosophy of the discipline’s object of study, whereas with translation, philosophy of translation refers to a philosophy of the object of study of translation studies, and philosophy of translation studies is a philosophy of the discipline of translation studies. Thus, I suggest that in translation studies, a clearer distinction should be made between philosophy of the discipline and philosophy of the discipline’s object of study.

The difference between philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies can be perhaps better illustrated by the example of philosophy of language and philosophy of linguistics. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Philosophy of linguistics is the philosophy of science as applied to linguistics. This differentiates it sharply from the philosophy of language, traditionally concerned with matters of meaning and reference”.¹ The dictionary entry further mentions that philosophy of linguistics includes “general topics relating to matters like methodology and explanation”, “more specific philosophical issues that come up in the special science at issue”, and lists topics such as “What the subject matter is”, “What the theoretical goals are”, “What form theories should take” and “What counts as data”. It also mentions some topics that fall on the borderline between philosophy of language and philosophy of linguistics. I believe that making a distinction between philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies in the sense meant above can enhance our views of the discipline’s engagement with its object of study. In the remainder of this section, I will discuss some general points concerning the relationship of translation, translation studies and philosophy.

Marais also delivers an argument that clearly reflects the disciplinary demarcation of translation studies: “[…] discussing the nature of translation is a philosophical endeavor, not a translation studies endeavor” (2014, 16, added italics). This argument illustrates particularly well what I mean when referring to philosophy as a meta-discipline (a question to which I will return below). Marais’s argument can be taken to mean that such “second-order” reflection is generally ascribed to the discipline called philosophy and not seen as belonging to the “first-order” praxis of research in translation studies. In addition, it simultaneously further highlights the fact that the field of translation studies continues to be remarkably uncoupled from that of philosophy. However, academic disciplines can – and do – have their own philosophies, and although philosophy of translation studies (second-order reflection) is not the same as research in translation studies (first-order activity), to engage in philosophy of translation studies is nevertheless a translation studies endeavor. This is to say that, in addition to addressing questions concerning the content of the field of translation studies, translation studies can – and should – ask philosophical questions about its own ontological and epistemological assumptions. Further still, asking such questions can even be considered essential to contribute to the self-understanding of the discipline. This kind of engagement is already underway in translation studies, as illustrated by some recent contributions addressing ontological and epistemological questions in translation studies. For example, at the level of the discipline in general, some prominent epistemological and ontological positions have been identified (see e.g. Basalamah 2023; Blumczynski and Sadler 2023; García Marín 2023), and discussion of ontological and epistemological questions is also ongoing at the subfield-specific level (Halverson and García 2022).

A way should be found to articulate the relationship between philosophy, translation and translation studies in such a way that enables making a distinction between translation studies as a first-order discipline and philosophizing as a second-order reflection on it while acknowledging their close interrelationship and the foundational role of philosophy in translation studies. Here, I would like to return to the concept of meta-discipline (second-order discipline) discussed above in order to elaborate on its meaning in the context of this study. The prefix meta – is generally associated with a level above or beyond something. However, one of its meanings is among, and I see it as relevant in this context. When translation studies asks itself: “What is translation?” or “What is the nature of our field of study?”, as presented in the quotation from Marais referred to at the beginning of this section, we are moving to the domain of philosophy or philosophy of science. Asking these questions positions us somehow above, or outside of, translation studies, but at the same time, what we are doing is deeply immersed in the substance of the discipline: We are engaged in an “excavation” of the discipline’s ontological and epistemological assumptions. I suggest that we embrace the double meaning of the prefix meta-, as both above and among, which would simultaneously acknowledge the difference between translation studies as a first-order discipline and philosophy as a second-order reflection on its activities, while acknowledging their entanglement. The two meanings of meta- allow to illustrate the inextricable intertwinement of translation studies and philosophy: It is not possible to philosophize about translation studies without moving within the discipline and not simply above or around it. In light of the above, I propose that philosophizing about the concept of translation and translation studies is both a philosophical and a translation studies endeavor.

In this article, I have outlined some of the possible ways in which we can articulate the relationship between translation, translation studies and philosophy. I have made every effort to emphasize that my purpose here has not been to create systems or to privilege some understandings over others, but to see philosophy as a manner of thinking that can be summarized by the following quotation from Shand: “philosophy is a metadiscipline that lays before those interested in thinking in an open-minded way, with no holds barred, the full array of ways in which one may think about things in the most general and fundamental sense” (2017, 292).

Discussion and conclusions

Although philosophy has not figured prominently in the discipline, translation studies is no stranger to philosophy. Unlike many other disciplines that are largely oriented towards producing practically relevant knowledge for solving real-world problems and often tend to avoid philosophical or metatheoretical debate – at least partly due to the irresolvability of fundamental ontological and epistemological issues – translation studies has this kind of irresolvability at the core of many of its long-standing and ongoing debates and discussions. The problematic of translation has long fascinated philosophers who “have often used translation as a vehicle or extended metaphor for discussing problems of philosophy because translation epitomizes and sets in high relief many aspects of language, cultural asymmetry, and problems related to communication among human beings” (Tymoczko 2019, 173). It could be said that, given their shared interest in the same phenomenon, translation studies and philosophy are already closely linked to each other.

I believe that translation studies will benefit from articulating and deepening its links with philosophy. This article has sought to outline some ways of articulating such links. Philosophy – here understood as second-order reflection on the first-order praxis of research in translation studies with the objective of laying bare the discipline’s ontological and epistemological assumptions – can help us understand the ways in which our choice of concepts, theories and methods to study translational phenomena structures our knowledge production. The way concepts, theories and methods frame our work is not neutral or unproblematic: our research approaches privilege some ways of knowing while suppressing others. Although our research approaches seem to work for us and we genuinely believe that they produce the kind of knowledge they are intended to produce, there is always room for philosophical inquiry unearthing the implicit assumptions underlying our approaches. Decision not to address the foundations and presuppositions underlying our research does not remove the constraints, only leaves them implicit. This study encourages individual researchers to reflect on the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying their own work and calls for critical philosophical engagement with the concept of translation and translation studies that can help the discipline explore its ontological and epistemological contours in a wider sense. This kind of an investigation into our efforts to know is fundamentally linked to our ideas of what constitutes valid knowledge.

The three distinctions proposed here are not intended as an overarching system to cover translation studies as a whole or as an exhaustive set of links between translation, translation studies, and philosophy. They are simply offered as some of the possible ways of articulating the relationship between translation, translation studies, and philosophy. These distinctions are relevant from the particular perspective of translation studies, and perhaps less interesting to philosophy proper. In principle, the kind of inquiry proposed here can begin at any point and with any object of interest we encounter in translation studies. By “excavating” ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying our research approaches to translational phenomena, we begin to illuminate and transform connections between research approaches, worldviews, disciplines, and ways of thinking and knowing, and to gain new insights into familiar phenomena, as well as to identify new issues that might be relevant to translation studies and worth exploring in the future.

A key point regarding the elements presented in the three distinctions is that philosophically informed research in translation studies is first-order activity of translation studies (and not philosophy). The others, philosophy of translation, philosophy of translation studies, philosophy as an imported doctrine and disciplinary philosophizing constitute philosophical engagement in the sense that they require second-order reflection on the first-order activity of translation studies. With all these activities situated within translation studies, it is of primary importance to be able to distinguish when we are engaged in first-order activity and when we are engaged in second-order reflection, because they have different purposes.

Philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies do not have any one source, but they stem from multiple sources simultaneously – articulated over time by many voices of translation scholars working with translational phenomena. Philosophy of translation and philosophy of translation studies is movement of thought involving several actors who were, and are today, thinking about and working on similar topics at the same time, expressing their individual ideas in response to what has been articulated in the field before. However, philosophizing does not lead to building systems or bodies of knowledge. There will be no closure to this endeavor, no “final” or “complete” philosophy of translation or philosophy of translation studies. We can turn our gaze towards our own engagement with translation and translation studies. In this way, philosophy of translation and translation studies is a joint undertaking of all past, present and future scholars. Viewing philosophy of translation studies as originating in the ongoing activity of philosophizing by scholars in translation studies requires that we acknowledge the philosophical complexity of the discipline and adopt a critical mind-set that is characterized by curiosity, openness and readiness to keep rethinking the foundations of the discipline.

Writing about the transdisciplinary nature of translation, Blumczynski (2016, 168) points out that translation has many dimensions – including a philosophical one – and he wishes to “challenge the opinion that the most insightful discussions of philosophy should be left to philosophers, theology to theologians, history to historians, and translation to translators (or translation studies scholars)”. This article is an attempt to encourage scholars in translation studies to activate their philosophical agency and to begin to philosophize about their own scholarly engagement in the field of translation studies as well as about the wider ontological and epistemological contours underlying the discipline. Most scholars in translation studies are perhaps not philosophers, but they are nevertheless capable of philosophizing.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sari Kokkola

Sari Kokkola is a translator and an authors’ editor at the Language Centre of the University of Lapland, Finland. Her research interests include the study of multimodality in translation, in particular from a phenomenologically informed perspective, the language professional’s role in academic text production, as well as the relationship between philosophy, translation, and translation studies.

Notes

1 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/.