What is Translation?

Centrifugal Theories, Critical Interventions

By: Robinson

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eBook | 17 December 2025 | Edition Number 1

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In What is Translation? Douglas Robinson investigates the present state of translation studies and looks ahead to the exciting new directions in which he sees the field moving. Reviewing the work of such theorists as Frederick Rener, Rita Copeland, Eric Cheyfitz, Andre Lefevere, Anthony Pym, Suzanne Jill Levine, Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz, Antoine Berman, Lawrence Venuti, and Philip E. Lewis, he both celebrates and critiques the last decade's work.

Since the mid-eighties, long-held ideas in translation scholarship have undergone dramatic revision, and Douglas Robinson has been a major figure in this transformation. A leader in a rapidly emerging "American" school of humanist/literary translation theory, he combines historical and literary scholarship with a highly personal, often anecdotal, style.

"Robinson's thinking about translation has always been extraordinarily original...In What is Translation? [he] continues to defy traditional conceptual thinking about translation....Many of the questions Robinson raises will have implications for the future development of the field of translation studies as well as repercussions beyond," writes Edwin Gentzler in his foreword to the book.

What is Translation? Is the fourth volume of the Translation Studies series, which aims to present a broad spectrum of thinking on translation and to challenge our conceptions of what translation is and how we should think about it.