Translation History: Just another Story?

The importance of translation history within the discipline of translation studies has still to be fully recognized, in spite of the fact that a growing expansion has been registered in recent years. The geographical boundaries of the traditions under consideration have been considerably widened, but several genres of translation activities (particularly the non-literary ones) deserve greater attention. For instance, the history of scientific translation is a subfield that has been recently brought to the attention of the translation studies community thanks to the contribution of scholars working both in the field of translation studies and in the scientific areas. But this example appears to be rather an isolated or exceptional case, rather than the rule, as far as the history of non-literary translation is concerned. Research on the history of legal translation, to mention another non-literary genre, is still underdeveloped. Translation historians have also to tread the delicate path among translation, history and historiography. Their expertise on notions such as transfer and mediation appears to be an invaluable contribution to the ongoing debate on historiography, which will be shortly illustrated in this contribution. Specific questions concerning periodization, representativeness, narrativization and self-reflexivity, to name just a few, have become central issues in the debates of both translation studies and historiography. As a consequence, translation and history should be conceptualized as complementary fields of research, reinforcing each other’s methods and promoting common objectives. Today, collaborative research between these two fields appears to be an unavoidable necessity, rather than a choice.