Introduction: (re-)conceptualizing translation in translation studies

KEYWORDS:

• Conceptualization
• translation
• translation studies
• turns of translation
• intersemiotic translation

The changing concepts of translation in the history of translation studies

The classic phrase “a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together”, taken from Ecclesiastes 3:5 of the King James Version of the Bible, is generally interpreted as a reflection on the cyclical nature of life and the inevitability of change. Since ancient times this has been a universal principle, from Heraclitus “change is the only constant in life” to Zhuangzi “all movement involves transformation, all time involves change; whatever we do, or do not do, things will assuredly mutate of themselves”. Everything has its own time and place, and the conceptualization of translation is no exception.

The question of how to conceptualize translation has been the topic of a long-standing debate and discussion in the history of translation studies (TS). In his now classic article “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”, Roman Jakobson (1959) classified translation as intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic. Although he focused on the linguistic types of translation, Jakobson hinted at the possibility of conceptualizing translation as going beyond linguistics and venturing into the broader realm of semiotics. This triadic system has stimulated a large number of comments, responses and interpretations. George Steiner (1992, 274), for example, challenges interlingual translation from a hermeneutic perspective: if translation involves two equivalent messages in two different codes, does “it make sense to speak of messages being equivalent when codes are different”? Maria Tymoczko, in a complementary way, questions the other two categories: “intralingual translation responds to the problematic of the nature of language, while intersemotic translation addresses the problematic of the concept of text” (2007, 56).

Since the early tradition of translation was so deeply rooted in comparative literature and applied linguistics, the understanding of translation at that time primarily revolved around linguistic transfer and equivalence. Translation scholars from the 1960s to 1980s, with Eugene Nida, Peter Newmark and John Catford as prominent examples, in following the “linguistic turn”, regarded translation essentially as a linguistic transfer at the interlingual level; they narrowly defined translation as “the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL)” (Catford 1965, 20), or as “rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text” (Newmark 1988, 5). The source text was assumed to have a stable and invariant meaning that can be transmitted into the target text in a perfect and mechanical way.

Disillusioned by the equivalence paradigm and complaining that literary scholars were focused on making pointless evaluative judgements and linguists failed to consider broader contextual dimensions, some scholars initiated a wave of contextualized and socio-culturally-oriented conceptualizations of translation from the 1980s onwards. Following the emergence of the “cultural turn” (Bassnett and Lefevere 1990), the simultaneous flourish of “descriptive translation studies” (Toury 1995), and the once influential idea of “cultural politics” (Venuti 1995), translation was reframed as a means of “constructing cultures” and “intercultural interaction”. It was seen as involving complex negotiations between languages, cultures and societies, thus being susceptible to change and manipulation (Lefevere 1992; Hermans 1999) and contingent on particular temporal, spatial, cultural and social configurations. From this perspective, translation is never innocent (Baker 2006) in its pursuit of linguistic equivalence or equivalent effect. Rather, it is always associated with transformation and difference. Consequently, the concept of translation is seen as an act of rewriting, and the translator is portrayed as a mediator or rewriter, and even a writer, impinging on cultural, political and social contexts (Lefevere 1992; Bassnett and Bush 2006). However, such an understanding of translation and translators is primarily derived from literary translation in the era of print and in the Western context, and points to its potential to expand by taking other forms of translation practice (e.g. news translation in Orengo 2005) into account in different cultural traditions (e.g. Chinese translation in Cheung 2011) and with various translation modalities (e.g. multimodal translation in Ketola 2016). Tymoczko (2007), for example, arguing against an inclusive and reductive definition given the diversified translation practices in different cultures, makes the point that translation should be defined as a cluster concept with open boundaries, including the cross-linguistic concept *translation, the cross-cultural concept *translation, the cross-temporal concept *translation, and the international concept *translation. She further maintained that

the openness of the concept indicates that the definitional impulse will be an ongoing strand of translation research as the field moves beyond its Western focus and as it contends with the challenges of contemporary and future conditions of translation. (106)

Over the last three decades or so, the conceptualization of translation has developed within what has become known as the “sociological turn” (Wolf and Fukari 2007). To appreciate the turn, one might do well to take paradigms of studying the social as they are imagined in sociology. There are three major approaches. Society may be studied as a macro-structure that governs individual agents’ actions. Alternatively, society may be viewed from the opposite perspective, namely, from a grass roots level upwards: individual agents are presented as constantly negotiating social institutions. Finally, there is an attempt to find a balanced viewpoint because social practices are difficult to explain exclusively by either the first or the second paradigm. When it comes to studying the social aspects of translation, all three approaches have been followed. Examples of macro-sociological discussions of translation are provided by applications of Niklas Luhmann’s social-systems theory (Hermans 1999; Tyulenev 2012). An example of a micro-sociological approach is, amongst others, deployment of Actor-Network Theory (Luo 2020). The third approach can be illustrated by the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories (Vorderobermeier 2014). Overall, taking social aspects into account has offered a more realistic, multidimensional and “warts-and-all” portrayal of translation. This turn has also allowed the conceptual apparatus for discussing translation and interpreting to be enriched.

The “cognitive turn” of TS developed in tandem with translation process research. Moving away from the traditional focus on texts, languages and cultures, it extends its interest to how the human (translators/interpreters) mind works, focusing on the mental activities and strategies used by translators, such as attention, perception, emotion, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, and creativity. From a dynamic process-oriented perspective, translation is thus defined as a complex cognitive activity (Hurtado Albir and Alves 2009), as a constructive process in which the translator actively constructs a new meaning that is appropriate for the target culture and audience. If the early phase of cognitive translation research was technology-driven, coupled with methodological advances and a renewed focus on translators’ language-based transference, the latest developments in this research paradigm have been deeply influenced by second-generation cognitive science, viewing translation as an embodied, embedded, enacted, extended and affective (4EA) cognitive activity (Muñoz Martín 2016, 9).

Recognizing translation as a form of semiotic transformation and building on Peircean semiotics, (bio)semiotic theories of translation argue that translation should be reconceptualized as work performed under semiotic constrains for the purpose of some or other teleological intent (Marais 2019). It expands the conceptualization of translation in two ways. Firstly, it argues that all meaning-making, not just meaning-making that includes language, entails a translational aspect. In other words, this conceptualization does not exclude language from its remit, but at the same time, it does not limit translation to the lingual. Secondly, it argues that it is not only human animals that translate. Rather, all living organisms act translationally and live in a translational relationship with their environment (Deely 2009). This second development situates translation within an ecological framework that does not exclude humanity but is not limited to it, either.

The sphere of TS has been constantly expanding alongside the “technological turn” occurring in translation and interpreting practice over the past few decades: this has also led to reflections on the concept of translation and the role and position of translators (Cronin 2010, 1; van Doorslaer 2020, 142). The easy accessibility of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies (e.g. CAT, MT, ChatGPT) and the proliferation of social media platforms have increased the efficiency of the translation process and the demand for translation services, but have also posed new challenges for translators and intensified the competition within language-service industries. Today, translators are often faced with the translation of source messages that involve (apart from verbal texts) multiple modalities, such as videos, images or emoticons; as a consequence, translation scholars are now interested in how multimodality shapes the translation process and redefines translation (Boria et al. 2019). Meanwhile, as the democratization of access to the internet and digital technology has led to a de-professionalization of translators (Díaz Cintas and Massidda 2019), community-based translation with multiple individuals contributing to the translation of a single piece of text has become increasingly common, especially among non-professional translators (Jiménez-Crespo 2017). AI technologies have also raised questions about the quality and ethics of translation as well as about the importance of human intervention in the translation process (Way 2018; Pym 2019). These questions contribute to a rethinking of the identity of translators as they are now also the consumers of translation (Cronin 2013) and take on more of a project management and quality assurance role rather than solely focusing on translation per se.

So far, we have outlined some dominant conceptualizations of translation in the history of TS and reviewed the way understanding of translation has evolved in a broadly chronological sequence. This evolutionary survey does not aim to be exhaustive, but rather aims to demonstrate the major trends in the conceptualization of translation in the course of development of TS.

(Re-)conceptualizing translation in this special issue

TS has been viewed as a succession of turns (Snell-Hornby 2006), be they “inward turns” (Zwischenberger 2019) or “outward turns” (Bassnett and Johnston 2019), leading to the changing conceptualization of translation throughout its history. However, the concept of “turns” in the discipline of TS is questionable in at least two respects. First, it suggests that the entire scholarly community of TS changed or changes the direction of their research. However, the terrain of research into translation looks increasingly less like a valley with a single river that once in a while turns in one direction or another but rather like a delta, a complex network of streams, all interconnected and leading to a vast ocean somewhere ahead. Second, regardless of whatever turns there have been in TS, they did not change the optics on translational phenomena – the transfixing gaze has always been on lingual manifestations of translation, primarily interlingual, or “translation proper”. Yet, how epistemologically justified is the dominant focus on lingual translation? Can one learn more about the phenomenon of translation if one takes into account non-lingual types of translation (Blumczynski 2023)? Would that shift in focus (from lingual translation to translation per se) result in the need to redraw the boundary of TS as a discipline and its relationship with other disciplines dealing with various kinds of translation?

The aim of this special issue is to address these crucial, discipline-defining but also inter- or trans-disciplinary questions. The initial idea of this issue came from the online lecture series under the same title organized by the Centre for Intercultural Mediation of Durham University in 2021. Although this series took place amid the COVID-19 pandemic, translation scholars and research students continued to be attracted by the invited talks, and the virtual format increased accessibility and flexibility, allowing for a wider audience to participate in the discussions. The speakers, discussants and audiences unanimously agreed that it is a topic that requires an in-depth exploration, particularly seeing that TS as a discipline has gained maturity while translation as a profession is facing tremendous challenges from AI technologies such as the recently introduced ChatGPT. The overwhelming number of abstract submissions following the call for papers, together with the dozen invited full-length manuscript submissions, formed the basis of the selected articles of this issue. Unlike other similar endeavours, such as Gambier and van Doorslaer (2016) and Marais (2022), which aimed to expand the boundaries of translation through dialogues between TS and other disciplines, this issue constrains the (re)conceptualization of translation within TS, with all the contributors identifying themselves as translation scholars. Although it is not possible to exhaustively tackle every aspect of this broad and profound topic or to answer all the questions we put forward in our initial call, readers are invited to view this special issue as a selection of representative responses to the ongoing debate on how to (re-)conceptualize translation from different angles, while remaining within the field of TS.

This issue starts with a theoretical response on “translating constraints” from Kobus Marais. Considering the role that translation plays in the emergence of society-culture, Marais argues that translation entails the semiotic work that is performed to create society-culture. Work always requires the imposition of constraints on energy. Based on this link between work and constraints, he considers absential constraints, namely the way in which ideas themselves become constraints on matter-energy like bodies, computers and other aspects of society-culture. He also explores the relationship between creativity and constraints through a discussion of work done by João Queiroz and his group. Queiroz argues that creativity is the result of the imposition of new sets of constraints on translation processes. Marais then considers the relative strength of ideational constraints by exploring Sara Bernstein’s philosophical work on modal distance. With this argument, he proposes a “soft” causality based on the possibility of new social-cultural forms emerging rather than being caused by some or other factor or factors. If society-culture is the effect of semiotic work, it means that it is, at a local level, an entropic state of affairs that has emerged from negentropic work. Marais thus argues that translation is a process in which the constraints on semiotic material are translated under further pragmatic constraints.

The next three articles aim to acquire new knowledge about translation when it mediates between different semiotic systems, extending the concept of translation to “computer code-switcher”, “meaning negotiator” and “intermedia transposition”.

James St André’s article, “Implications of computer code translation for translation studies”, examines the nature of translation by comparing it with computer programs, notably their codes. St André also ponders the relationship between translation, computer science, cognitive science and linguistics, and the potential of cooperation between them. While there are obvious differences between human translation and natural languages, on the one hand, and machine translation and machine languages, on the other, there are also curious rapprochements which are worth investigating. Although his is only “a preliminary exploration”, St André reports a number of interesting ideas and discoveries, some allowing us to revisit what is already known about translation and some adumbrating new directions of research. For instance, the difficulty of using logical computer languages in machine translation problematizes the applicability of Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory to translation. New ways of looking at computer languages offer a fresh appreciation of well-known theories (e.g. George Steiner’s translation as interpretation). Emergent properties of computer languages demonstrate the potential of complexity theory for studying translation, a subject still insufficiently explored. New insights gained or to be gained in comparative studies of translation, natural and computer languages may be relevant to constructing MT capable of producing texts that would require less human intervention. Incidentally, St André’s article is an exciting epistemological experiment in exploring a metaphor’s (the computer is a brain, or the brain is a computer) potential for both research into translation and practical aspects of translation.

Sergey Tyulenev’s “Translation as meaning negotiator” explores semiotic-semantic properties of translation. Tyulenev looks into how translation makes meaning in terms of counteracting or, as he argues, contributing to semiotic-semantic entropy. More commonly, translation renders the less familiar by means of the more familiar. This was the implication in early theorizing of translation or translation-like mechanisms in semiotics and this is what is readily found in translating between different sign systems, exemplified in the article by mediation between musicology and language in one case study, and between biochemistry and language in another case study. However, Tyulenev also identifies cases where translation turns the more familiar into the less familiar, that is to say, it may act as an entropy-generating, rather than a negentropic agent. The examples discussed come from the realm of painting-qua-translation. Some paintings by Joan Miró, Peter Bruegel the Elder and by Hieronymus Bosch act as translations of words or verbal texts. Moreover, painting-qua-translation may render semantically clearer notions into more complicated and arcane target texts. In fact, when one comes to think of it, this way of translating is quite common in the arts (e.g. in fables, fairy tales, Old Norse kennings). The article demonstrates that translation’s meaning-making properties are far from one-directional – from less-developed signs into more-developed signs; rather, translation is a more complex negotiation of meaning.

Zarja Vršič argues that intermedia studies, in this case involving translation between paintings and novels, contribute to a broader understanding of translation. Through an analysis of the ways in which Claude Simon translated Francis Bacon’s paintings into a novel, Vršič argues that approaches to interlingual translation can be fruitfully used in intermedia translation. In particular, she refers to the hermeneutic and dialogic approaches to interlingual translation. Vršič further argues that intermedia translation inevitably entails interpretative choices, not only choices related to the different media. Based on the argument that any translation entails some form of creation, she proposes that the term translation be expanded to include more than mere interlingual translation. She also points to the importance of an interdisciplinary debate about the nature of translation, seeing that different disciplines contribute different aspects to this debate. In her view, “borderline cases like intermedia translation” stimulate thought about the nature of translation. This is an important argument for interdisciplinarity, though one could question whether or for how long intermedia translation will be regarded as “borderline”.

The following two articles, through their respective cross-disciplinary perspectives, seek to redefine some translation-related concepts, including domestication, transediting, gatekeeping and convergence in journalistic translation; and source text (sensory experience) and experiential equivalence in museum translation.

Roberto Valdeón’s article, “On the cross-disciplinary conundrum”, is a potent and persuasive call for studying translation as a cross-disciplinary exercise. In this case, it is about the interactions, actual and potential, of two adjacent humanities – TS and communication/journalism studies. Valdeón argues that both disciplines may well benefit from a concerted action and a mutually enriching dialogue because both are interested in the focal role of translation in today’s internationalized world. At present, in Valdeón’s diagnosis, there is a hurdle – the lack of unity in conceptualizing translation. Valdeón also discovers a reluctance to factor in translation when the internationalized mediascape is discussed in communication/journalism studies. Yet, clearly, as TS scholars have demonstrated time and time again, translation is a vital mechanism that shapes present-day mass media and enables them to function across languages and cultures. Although it seems that translation, as it is practised in mass media, is currently side-lined in communication/journalism studies, or discussions of it are prone to shallowness and a lack of engagement, there are promising examples of cooperation which show how disciplinary boundaries can be overcome in the mutual pursuit of a comprehensive understanding of the studied phenomena.

Marina Manfredi and Chiara Bartolini’s article, “Integrating museum studies into translation studies”, also proposes a cross-disciplinary reflection spanning the fields of museum studies (MS), audio description (AD) and TS in order to reconceptualize two key translation-related concepts: source text and equivalence. Museum AD, a modality of intersemiotic translation, was aptly chosen as a supporting case to redefine these concepts and reflect upon translation as a “semiosic process” (Marais 2019). The authors first propose to reconceptualize the source text and group it with the target text as a single entry under sensory experience. This idea reflects the shift from objects to experiences in MS, and it approaches museum AD as a multilevel process of translation and interpretation, including the assimilation of visual information and the social, cognitive and emotional elements of visits. They further argue that the concept of equivalence should not be restricted to single texts (i.e. the object on display or the AD itself), but rather extend to the collective experience of such texts, the associated meanings and memories. They suggest that “experiential equivalence” could be defined as a type of equivalence based on the holistic experience of the user, including personal, social, physical, and sensory dimensions. This experience creates a continuous stream of memories and reflections about the object/artifact described through AD and should be at the heart of any museum visit as a meaning-making process.

The final two articles focus on interpreting and translation practices in the modern digital age, and the consequent professional and academic implications that arose from the (re)conceptualization of translation/interpreting. Both articles share common concerns about how the involvement of machines may impact the definition of translation/interpreting. Franz Pöchhacker proposes restricting the definition of interpreting to within the loop of human live translation while Binghan Zheng et al. adopt a less anthropocentric approach and suggest including both humans and non-humans under the designation of translators.

Pöchhacker adds a valuable perspective from interpreting studies to the debate. On the one hand, he argues for a complexity approach when trying to conceptualize translation. In particular, he argues that a variety of stakeholders from the industry contribute to this conceptualization. On the other hand, he addresses the role of interpreting, i.e. the immediate oral rendition of a message, in translation theory. One of the contributions of his article is to carve out a place for interpreting studies within TS. Since interpreting studies has established itself as a relatively independent field of study, Pöchhacker’s concerns and suggestions are legitimate. This does raise the question, though, of whether scholarly work should primarily be about the defence of disciplines. In our view, any understanding of intersemiotic translation should by definition include interpreting activities of various types within it and indeed include much more basic forms of communication such as those taking place within and between living organisms where language plays no role. Pöchhacker’s argument also raises the issue of the extent to which scholarly conceptualizations should be subject to divisions in professional activities, and here we would obviously exclude training which always has a direct interest in the workplace.

With a keen awareness of the impact of digital technologies on the understanding of translation and translators, the article contributed by Zheng et al. focuses upon YouTube comment translation (YCT) on Bilibili, a popular video-sharing social media website in China. As a new translation practice facilitated by new media and the participatory ecology of the digital age, YCT on Bilibili refers to the practice whereby grassroots users of the social media platform Bilibili translate verbal comments on the videos from YouTube into multimodal texts via a variety of semiotic resources, traversing both linguistic and semiotic boundaries. Taking two highly influential vlogs on Bilibili as illustrative cases, Zheng et al. argue for conceptualizing translation as an assemblage of multimodal resources that reconstitutes the original meanings of the source text. Based on their discovery of the significant role of non-human actors in the translation process, the authors also challenge the fetishization of human translators and suggest expanding the concept of translators to encompass both human and non-human actors. More significantly, drawing inspiration from post-humanist perspectives in other disciplines, they provocatively yet insightfully propose to adopt a post-humanist approach to reconceptualize translation and translators in the digital age.

Reflections and what next?

Why does a field like translation studies continue asking questions about its nature? Mathematicians, the argument usually goes, do not keep on speculating on what mathematics is, and equally, biologists are not in constant debate about the meaning of the word biology. While the argument may be true as far as mathematicians and biologists are concerned, it tends to ignore a number of relevant points. The first is that mathematics, and to a lesser degree biology, is a millennia-old field of study, and it has had its debates about what counts as mathematics, hence the philosophy of mathematics. Secondly, in contrast, TS is a relatively young discipline, which would make it more reasonable for the field to debate the nature of its existence. Thirdly, one could argue that fields of study like mathematics and biology engage with relatively stable phenomena. It is true that life forms have changed over the past few million years, but the basics of cellular biology have remained relatively stable over this time. In contrast, cultural evolution is a fast process in which major changes take place over relatively short periods of time, as witnessed in the rapid impact of gender identification on language. This relative difference in evolutionary speed could partly explain why TS need to rethink translation – yet again.

TS seems to stand at a crossroads. On the one hand, it has successfully established itself as a valid field of study with interlingual translation as a selling point. On the other hand, various developments – technological and social-cultural – as well as in research, e.g. biosemiotics, have made it untenable to continue to focus exclusively, or even primarily, on interlingual translation. Other fields of study featuring translation have sprung up beside TS – for example, intermediality, multimodality, intersemiotic translation, and medical translation – not to mention existing disciplines with an interest in translation, such as mathematics, computer science, biology and law (Marais 2022).

Perhaps a complexity approach could be valuable in resolving this problem. This would mean that, possibly, a decision is not needed. Or rather, an either-or decision is not needed. For TS merely to give intersemiotic translation due space and add it to the established interests in the field does not detract from the traditional focus of TS. We do not suggest that the solution is to replace interlingual translation with intersemiotic translation. Rather, a consensus seems to be emerging that translation is primarily a semiotic activity. This means that each and every semiotic activity has a translational aspect to it that can be studied in TS. Once that position is accepted, interlingual translation is by definition an important part of TS, as are intralingual and all other forms of translation. And once that position is granted, interpreting as conceptualized in interpreting studies, is by definition also an important part of TS, and as Pöchhacker correctly points out, a part that predates written translation.

What needs to be carefully considered, as Pöchhacker rightly indicates in his article, is the pedagogical implications of this shift in conceptualization. TS (including interpreting studies) has shaped its curricula to fit a particular industry. How these curricula need to be adapted to include professional work in intersemiotic translation needs to become a matter of debate. We would suggest, however, that TS as a discipline does not need to reinvent the wheel: rather, curricula in TS can be broadened to include intersemiotic translation, intermediality and multimodality.

Closing this introduction, we would like to consider briefly our experience of editing this special issue. While the call for papers has attracted quite a number of abstracts in which potential contributors explained what they wanted to discuss, it transpired, somewhat disappointingly, that the majority of translation scholars still think of translation primarily as an interlingual practice or, at most, an intersemiotic one. As guest editors, we have endeavoured to encourage contributors to think outside of the box in the topics they chose, to shed the fetters of the old ways in which translation is being conceptualized, and try to discover new thought-provoking dimensions, even to venture outside the boundaries of the discipline of TS as it is known today. We fully appreciate that these ambitious goals cannot be achieved through a handful of articles. Rather, we hope to pose a question or a bevy of questions and issue an invitation to continue along the lines we have managed to draw, or, better still, take them as a starting point, as a first attempt to prospect a new, unmapped territory. It is our firm belief that more prospecting expeditions will inevitably follow.

Acknowledgements

The guest editors would first express their gratitude to Piotr Blumczynski and the editorial team of Translation Studies for their professional guidance and invaluable support throughout the editorial process. Our thanks also to the anonymous peer reviewers for the insightful and constructive reports that have helped to shape the content of the articles and improve their overall quality. Finally, our acknowledgement extends to Yves Gambier for contributing his inspiring response, and to Don Starr for meticulously proofreading the introduction.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Binghan Zheng

Binghan Zheng is Professor of Translation Studies at Durham University, where he is the Director of the Centre for Intercultural Mediation. His research interests include cognitive translation/interpreting studies, neuroscience of translation, and comparative translation/interpreting studies. His recent publications appeared in journals such as Target, Across Languages and Cultures, Journal of Pragmatics, Brain and Cognition, Perspectives, Translation and Interpreting Studies, and Foreign Language Teaching and Research. He has guest edited the special issue “Towards Comparative Translation & Interpreting Studies” (2017) for Translation and Interpreting Studies (with Sergey Tyulenev), and his monograph Translation Process Research: Theories, Methods and Issues is forthcoming in 2023.

Sergey Tyulenev

Sergey Tyulenev is Professor of Translation Studies at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University, the Editor of Routledge Introductions to Translation and Interpreting, and a member of the advisory boards of the journals Translation and Interpreting Studies and Translation in Society. He has published widely in leading translation and interpreting studies journals and among his major publications are Theory of Translation (2004); Applying Luhmann to Translation Studies (2011); Translation and the Westernization of Eighteenth-Century Russia (2012); Translation and Society: An Introduction (2014); Translation in the Public Sphere (2018). His personal website is tyulenev.org.

Kobus Marais

Kobus Marais is Professor of Translation Studies in the Department of Linguistics and Language Practice at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. He has published three monographs, namely Translation Theory and Development Studies: A Complexity Theory Approach (2014), A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation: The Emergence of Social-Cultural Reality (2018) and Trajectories of Translation: The Thermodynamics of Semiosis (2023) and an edited volume Translation beyond Translation Studies (2022). In addition, he has published edited volumes with Ilse Feinauer, Translation Studies beyond the Postcolony (2017), and with Reine Meylaerts, Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies: Methodological Considerations (2018), Exploring the Implications of Complexity Thinking for Translation Studies (2021), and The Routledge Handbook of Translation Theory and Concepts (2023). His research interests are translation theory, complexity thinking, semiotics/biosemiotics and development studies.