Language across Languages New Perspectives on Translation

Since the first written documents in the history of mankind (produced at the end of the 4th millennium BC), translation has always played a pivotal role in human societies. Translators were needed whenever the need for contact between different-speaking communities arose, such as for the purposes of communication, commerce, and declarations of war, or peace. Translation is even more important in today’s world. Globalization has brought the nations of the Earth closer, to the extent that books, movies and television programs released or aired far away in the world are just a click of the mouse away. However, such cultural products still have to be translated in order to be enjoyed by a wider audience. In international relations, diplomacies work very much on the basis of what is said and written, meaning that official documents and political charts need to be correctly and precisely translated. Hi-tech devices, such as tablets and smartphones, have their software translated into an increasing number of languages, in order to be accessible to a larger number of people. The challenging issues that arise for translation studies from these socio-cultural changes in Western Europe and all over the world are tackled in this volume according to two intertwined viewpoints: From a strictly linguistic perspective, typological differences between genetically unrelated languages challenge linguists in gaining an overall understanding of what language really is: how can linguistic categories, be they verbal, nominal or pertaining to other domains of the grammar, be defined? How are they shaped in syntax? From the point of view of anthropological linguistics, on the other hand, the cross-linguistic differences that come to the fore illustrate that translating – as well as language itself – is one of the basic cognitive strategies of the human mind.