Pym Anthony Pym – författare

This is about people, not texts – a translator ethics seeks to embrace the intercultural identity of the translatory subject, in its full array of possible actions.Based on seminars originally given at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris, this translation from French has been fully revised by the author and extended to include critical commentaries on activist translation theory, non-professional translation, interventionist practices, and the impact of new translation technologies. The result takes the traditional discussion of ethics into the way mediators can actively create cooperation between cultures, while at the same time addressing very practical questions such as when one should translate or not translate, how much translators should charge, or whose side they should be on.On Translator Ethics offers a point of reference for the key debates in contemporary Translation Studies.

To go “beyond” the work of a leading intellectual is rarely an unambiguous tribute. However, when Gideon Toury founded Descriptive Translation Studies as a research-based discipline, he laid down precisely that intellectual challenge: not just to describe translation, but to explain it through reference to wider relations. That call offers at once a common base, an open and multidirectional ambition, and many good reasons for unambiguous tribute. The authors brought together in this volume include key players in Translation Studies who have responded to Toury’s challenge in one way or another. Their diverse contributions address issues such as the sociology of translators, contemporary changes in intercultural relations, the fundamental problem of defining translations, the nature of explanation, and case studies including pseudotranslation in Renaissance Italy, Sherlock Holmes in Turkey, and the coffee-and-sugar economy in Brazil. All acknowledge Translation Studies as a research-based space for conceptual coherence and creativity; all seek to explain as well as describe. In this sense, we believe that Toury’s call has been answered beyond expectations.

Translation Studies has recently been searching for connections with Cultural Studies and Sociology. This volume brings together a range of ways in which the disciplines can be related, particularly with respect to research methodologies. The key aspects covered are the agents behind translation, the social histories revealed by translations, the perceived roles and values of translators in social contexts, the hidden power relations structuring publication contexts, and the need to review basic concepts of the way social and cultural systems work. Special importance is placed on Community Interpreting as a field of social complexity, the lessons of which can be applied in many other areas. The volume studies translators and interpreters working in a wide range of contexts, ranging from censorship in East Germany to English translations in Gujarat. Major contributions are made by Agnès Whitfield, Daniel Gagnon, Franz Pöchhacker, Michaela Wolf, Pekka Kujamäki and Rita Kothari, with an extensive introduction on methodology by Anthony Pym.