Introduction

This Introduction explains the rationale for the handbook and its structure and presents the individual chapters. Acknowledging the fragmented nature of the origins of thinking on translation, the authors use ‘Translation Studies’ to encompass both more contemporary academic research on translation, as well as ideas on the practice of interpreting and translation that were formulated before translation was formalized as a field of intellectual enquiry, with its own paradigms and terminology. The authors show how they have tried in this volume to represent TIS as a global field, avoiding focusing only on the history of its development in Western Europe and including a range of historical contexts, from the earliest discourses in Assyria, Egypt, Israel, China, India, and Greece, to the early 20th century when TIS emerged as an identifiable academic field in Eastern Europe. The chapters in this volume, they argue, testify that the practice of translation has had a formative influence on the spread of knowledge, narratives and power.