LINGUIST List 22.2987 Fri Jul 22 2011 Review: Translation: Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer (eds., 2010) Editor for this issue: Anja Wanner <anjalinguistlist.org> This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. Directory         1.     Mairi McLaughlin , Handbook of Translation Studies Message 1: Handbook of Translation Studies Date: 22-Jul-2011 From: Mairi McLaughlin <mclaughlinberkeley.edu> Subject: Handbook of Translation Studies E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-4598.html EDITORS: Gambier, Yves and Doorslaer, Luc van TITLE: Handbook of Translation Studies SUBTITLE: Volume 1 SERIES TITLE: Handbook of Translation Studies 1 PUBLISHER: John Benjamins YEAR: 2010 Mairi L. McLaughlin, Department of French, University of California, Berkeley SUMMARY The Handbook of Translation Studies (Volume 1) is aimed at a relatively broad audience of students, scholars, experts and professionals. Readers are likely to come from both within translation studies and from other disciplines. The handbook consists of a two-page introduction followed by 74 short articles, each treating a different subfield in translation studies. Most of the entries are between four and eight pages long, with a few longer pieces reserved for what are considered more substantial topics such as 'Descriptive translation studies,' 'Interpreting studies,' 'Literary studies and translation studies,' and 'The turns of translation studies.' The articles are written by specialists in the different subfields, and were all subject to peer review. The volume ends with a subject index. The Handbook of Translation Studies (Volume 1) is available in print copy and in an online edition (http://www.benjamins.com/online/hts/). The articles were initially the same in both versions, but the version online has the advantage of offering hyperlinks to the Translation Studies Bibliography (http://www.benjamins.com/online/tsb/). This is an annotated bibliography of translation and interpreting studies that is also published by John Benjamins and has been available since 2004. The editors point out that contributors will be asked to keep the online entries up to date. EVALUATION The Handbook of Translation Studies is definitely a useful volume for those interested in acquiring some understanding of the vast field of research in translation studies. It is organized in a relatively straightforward manner around titles based on keywords (e.g. 'Adaptation,' 'Corpora,' 'Interpreting,' 'Subtitling,' 'Translation,' 'Globalization and translation,' 'Journalism and translation,' and 'Terminology and translation'). This is an intentional strategy to facilitate readers' use of the handbook alongside the Translation Studies Bibliography, also organized around keywords. It does, however, make for a slightly unusual contents page and one or two rather peculiar titles such as 'Web and translation.' Nevertheless, this organization definitely makes the handbook particularly accessible to readers from outside the discipline. The entries are written by specialists in the various subfields so translation scholars will not be surprised to find Michael Cronin writing about 'Globalization and translation,' Jeremy Munday writing about 'Translation Studies' as a discipline and Sara Laviosa writing about 'Corpora.' Some of the other names are definitely less familiar but the spread of regions and institutions that are represented certainly coincides with centers of activity in the discipline today (e.g. Finland, northern Europe, Spain and Vienna). The entries all attempt to offer an overview of the given subfield. This generally involves an historical account of its evolution. The reader will notice obvious parallels between the different subfields: the relative youth of the discipline of translation studies means that most of the key developments have taken place in the last two or three decades. A few interesting exceptions to this include an early research article on interpreting written by Sanz in 1930 (see the entry on 'Interpreting Studies' by Franz Pöchhacker). In a few articles, the focus seems to shift entirely away from translation studies to the practice of translation itself. For example, in Jorge Díaz Cintas' entry on 'Subtitling,' the reader learns a great deal about subtitling but there is very little about the work that has been done on this practice within translation studies. Once again, this might be related to the relative youth of the field but it is a feature of this book that renders it more suitable for those entering the discipline than for established scholars. As one would expect in a publication such as this, frequent reference is made to key publications and each entry is followed by a short list of references. This is the feature of the entries that is probably the most useful for scholars, particularly those starting out research in an area that is new to them. Scholars new to the field -- or subfields -- will also be introduced to the terminology of the discipline. The entry on 'Corpora,' for example, offers a very clear outline of the different types of corpora that can be compiled (e.g. sample or monitor; synchronic or diachronic; general or specialized; monolingual, bilingual or multilingual; written, spoken, mixed or multimodal; annotated or non-annotated). This entry is particularly clear and logical in describing corpora, the tools of analysis and the field of corpus-based translation studies. The final section of the article on 'Looking to the future' suggests a certain amount of excitement about the future of this subfield that has come to dominate translation studies in the first decade of the twentieth century. What is absent from this article -- and indeed from many others -- is a good sense of the principal findings of the subfield. This is not wholly surprising: this is a field in its early days, many findings remain contentious and it is not the purpose of a handbook to become embroiled in these debates. Nevertheless, the book as a whole might have benefited from more mention of particular findings and results so as to avoid the occasional vague passage. Given the large number of contributors, it is not surprising that there is a certain level of stylistic variation among the articles. The entry on 'Literary studies and translation studies' (perhaps aptly) stands out for its lively engaging tone. The entry on 'Semiotics and translation' achieves a much welcomed clarity despite the relative complexity of some of the notions treated. In a few cases, a little more editing would have made for a smoother style; the entry on 'Drama translation,' for example, contains some awkward collocations, such as 'reveal of' instead of 'reveal about,' and the occasional obscure phrase such as 'The expected life span of such is long.' The translation-studies readership is likely to be as forgiving as possible when it comes to such errors, but slightly more rigorous copy-editing would have been beneficial. It is to the editors' and publishers' credit, however, that this variety of styles does not lead to an uncomfortable choppiness. A feeling of unity is created by the constancy of aims, and formal features such as article-length, number of references and the mise en page. As the editors themselves admit, this Handbook of Translation Studies is ''not the first of its kind'' (Gambier and Doorslaer 2010: 1). Indeed, a number of encyclopedias and handbooks have been published in recent years. The most useful of these for researchers in translation studies is without doubt the four-volume Translation Studies: Critical Concepts in Linguistics edited by Mona Baker (2009). Baker also edited the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2008). Also a one-volume reference work, this is arguably the closest competition to Gambier and Doorslaer's handbook. It is also worth mentioning Kuhiwczak and Littau's (2007) Companion to Translation Studies. Although it is considerably shorter than any of the other works mentioned here -- it contains just 9 articles -- it considers in greater detail some of the same subfields covered by the Handbook of Translation Studies. The shorter companion also highlights the relatively narrow perspective adopted in some of the entries in the handbook; where the Handbook of Translation Studies has a six-page article on drama translation (by Sirkku Aaltonen), the Companion to Translation Studies has a fourteen-page article that addresses both theater and opera translation (by Mary Snell-Hornby). It is somewhat surprising that opera translation is not mentioned in the handbook. Although it is not the only one of its kind, the Handbook of Translation Studies (Volume 1) will indeed be useful to the broad audience of students, scholars and professionals targeted by the publisher. It will serve some as an entry into translation studies as a discipline, whereas for others, it will be the first point of contact with a range of different subfields. It is less likely to be useful as a reference work once scholars have begun working in a particular subfield. It is unclear how regularly contributors will update their entries in the online version of the handbook, but if they do so with some frequency, then the existence of the online version could represent the greatest advantage of this handbook over all others. REFERENCES Baker, Mona (ed.). 2008. Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies, 2nd ed. London/New York: Routledge. Baker, Mona (ed.). 2009. Translation studies: Critical concepts in linguistics. 4 vols. Abingdon /New York: Routledge. Gambier, Yves & Luc van Doorslaer (eds). 2010. Handbook of translation studies. Vol I. Amsterdam /Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kuhiwczak Piotr & Karin Littau (eds). 2007. A companion to translation studies. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Mairi L. McLaughlin is an Assistant Professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in French and Romance linguistics as well as translation studies. Most of her work in both linguistics and translation studies centers on syntax, and she is particularly interested in the language of the press. She is the author of the book 'Syntactic Borrowing in Contemporary French: A Linguistic Analysis of News Translation' (Oxford: Legenda, 2011). Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 22-Jul-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.