The Advanced Translation Research Center (ATRC)

Despite its eminent cultural, political, social and economic relevance in modern society, T&I (=translation and interpreting) research is still fragemented with its profile shaped mostly by individuals and/or small groups across national borders and across institutional boundaries as portrayed by Daniel Gile (1999:167-178).

The reasons for this are manifold and complex, among them are the heterogeneous development of T&I research on the periphery of traditional disciplines, mainly philologies and literature studies, and its strong roots in practice. It was not until the mid-seventies that T&I-specific research proceeding from authentic T&I problems and based upon translation-specific questionings, concepts and methodologies started to evolve.

Against this background, ATRC research focuses on questions concerning the general, language-independent concepts and methodology of translation and interpreting because they constitute the heart of T & research. Within this perspective ATRC research proceeds from authentic T&I problems in their interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic dimensions and settings.

In the process of developing solutions for such authentic problems, ATRC research has often found it necessary to operationalize concepts in their translation-specific dimension, i.e. the concepts of culture, norm, information structure, isotopy and coherence and make them available for translation and interpreting purposes.


More on Research
More on the development of translation research in Germany (in German)
Gerzymisch-Arbogast, Heidrun (2003): "Die Translationswissenschaft in Deutschland - Start oder Fehlstart? Kritische Bemerkungen zur wissenschaftlichen Entwicklung eines Fachs". In: Nord, B./Schmitt, P. A. [Hrsg.]: Traducta Navis. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Christiane Nord. Tübingen: Stauffenburg-Verlag. ISBN 3-86057-632-1. 23-30