Mapping the Shifts in Translation Practice and Translation Studies: A Review of Literature

Abstract

This paper presents the development of translation practice and translation studies, tracking their distinct yet complementary trajectories in Western and Indian contexts, and it tracks the historical progression of translation practice spanning across early, medieval, and contemporary periods. Beginning with Cicero’s ancient sense-for-sense approach, this paper covers medieval regional transcreations like the Telugu Mahabharata, and extends to modern digital systems. The paper examines how the academic field transitioned through multiple theoretical shifts. The linguistic turn of Translation studies laid emphasis on structural equivalence and put textual fidelity at the fore. On the other hand, the functionalist approaches like Skopos theory, accorded importance to the target text’s specific purpose. Later, the cultural turn, popularised by Lefevere and Venuti, looked at the power relations, re-examination of ideologies, and reiterated the translator’s visibility. Moving on from this, the review examines the sociological turn of translation studies views translators as active social agents existing within realm of institutional structures. The paper also analyses the more articulative postcolonial and feminist turns that challenge inequality, linguistic dominance of the West, and the marginalization of subaltern, regional, or female voices. Lastly, the paper explores the technological turn and investigates how neural machine translation and artificial intelligence alter the existing practices of translation studies. This section addresses critical ethical concerns regarding cultural nuance, copyright, and algorithmic data bias. This review draws a comprehensive outline of the evolution of the Translation Studies discipline from a simple language transfer to the ethical act of cultural mediation.