On the Bodily Dimension of Translators and Translating,

Over the last decades, embodiment theories have been mainly developed in the cognitive sciences as well as in various cultural sciences, in philosophy, psychology and linguistics. The concept of ‘embodiment’ refers to the notion of a specific relation between the system of human cognition and the human body. Central is the claim that human cognition forms a functional unit together with the entire human body in such a way that the human ability for thinking is tightly connected to the cognition’s embedment in a human body ─ a human body which itself is embedded in an environment. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the notion of embodiment has also had an impact in the field of Translation Studies, in particular among primarily cognitive oriented translation process researchers. The paper aims to affirm the necessity of rethinking translation in terms of embodiment, and in this context, we argue that also Genetic Translation Studies can help to strengthen a foundation to this idea. The crucial link of evidence is provided by the fact that recently, more and more translators started to produce texts in which they reflect upon the identity of translators by describing themselves, their idea of translation and their translation practices. The individual experience and the concept of body – with its dimensions of perception, senses, movement and emotion – play a central role in such translator’s self-representations.