Adventures in Translation Studies

Michaela Wolf and Kate Sturge came up with the idea of Translation Studies, and were exemplary and inspired editors for its first five years. They approached Valerie Henitiuk about taking the editorial reins of their journal in 2011 and she in turn approached Carol O’Sullivan and Red Chan about joining the journal as associate editors. To be invited in this way to become involved with one of the most exciting journals in the discipline was a great honour and, to repurpose the words of J.M. Barrie, the beginning of an awfully big adventure.

Kate and Michaela were a very hard act to follow. Over the years, a number of valued colleagues have stepped up to this challenge alongside Valerie and Carol. Unfortunately, Red Chan was obliged for health reasons to step down from the journal’s editorial board. Piotr Blumczyński joined the editorial team as an associate editor in 2014 and Brigid Maher in 2016. The important role of book reviews editor, first held by Nadja Grbić, has been held successively by Christopher Larkosh, Piotr, Brigid and now Anna Strowe. Each of these colleagues has brought their varied insight, energy, wide acquaintance with the discipline, good humour and collegiality to the exhilarating and often surprising job of editing a journal. In 2015, Valerie and Carol published a jointly written chapter discussing some of the challenges and experiences stemming from our editorial work (Henitiuk and O’Sullivan 2015) which also sought to give advice to potential authors.

One of our journal adventures has been a technological one. Valerie, Carol and Red’s involvement with Translation Studies coincided with the switch to an online manuscript submission and review platform, Scholar One Manuscripts. While this not-always-intuitive platform poses some interesting challenges to the journal’s traditionally friendly communication style, it has been of undeniable benefit logistically. iFirst publication has been an even more useful innovation, allowing articles to appear with a DOI on the Web before they have been assigned to an issue.

The core editorial team is dwarfed by the large academic and professional community which has supported the journal over the years. To single out specific names would be invidious, but we would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of our distinguished consultative and advisory boards, our heroically unsung reviewers, and the many colleagues who keep Translation Studies running smoothly. We would also like to thank the authors who submit their work to us; we are able to publish only a small percentage of it, but their work is the heart of the journal, and it is an honour to work with them.

The journal has gone through another major reconfiguration of its editorial team, as our editor-in-chief Professor Valerie Henitiuk has now stepped down in order to pursue other projects. Her contribution to the journal over the last five years cannot be overstated; she has led it with intellectual distinction, creativity, grace and consummate effectiveness. Those of us who have been privileged to work with her will greatly miss her energy, her kindness, her sense of fun, her exquisite tact (a hallmark also of Kate and Michaela’s leadership of the journal) and her clarity of thinking. Carol O’Sullivan is taking on the role of editor, with Piotr and Brigid as associate editors, in the awareness of following in the footsteps of three amazing women.

With all the changes there have been over the years, the aims and scope of Translation Studies have remained consistent. The need for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary dialogue identified at the time of the journal’s inception is still very much present. The journal seeks to welcome work of an interdisciplinary nature, and to speak to work across disciplines. The discipline of translation studies has consolidated itself and also extended its reach in the past five years, but will undoubtedly continue both to innovate and consolidate in the years to come; we are eager to see how our journal can contribute to its ongoing development.

Over the past five years the journal’s editorial priorities have also held fast. These include: to welcome voices from parts of the world which are less represented in mainstream scholarly journals; to entertain new and provocative ideas; to represent the best of what gets published in our discipline. Our special issues and forum discussions have been particularly helpful in this respect, as they have made space for substantial steps forward in specific disciplinary conversations, notably the recent dialogue between translation studies and book history. Forthcoming special issues on indirect translation, translation in Russian translingual contexts, nonsense and madness in translation, and translation and interpreting in Ireland will surely help to enliven and enrich scholarship in these fields.

The landscape of scholarly publishing has shifted remarkably over the past decade; there has been a proliferation of translation journals, and indeed journals in general. The basic model of journal article has not really changed in this time. Online publication has greatly increased their reach, but has not, on the whole, promoted flexibility of format. The experience we have gained through running Translation Studies of the nature of academic discussion suggests that the scholarly journal format will need to change and adapt in future years. A publishing format which allowed for greater interactivity between writers and readers would be welcome. Journalism has been transformed by social media and by the line which separates ATL [“above the line”] from BTL [“below the line”]. This would appear to have considerable potential to enliven and diversify academic debate. It will be of interest to see how academic publishing, and this journal, change and develop over the 10 years ahead.