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Introduction 9
For many, the term universal is perhaps too radical, too abrupt, too absolute.
Such objections may result in a general preference for another term, such as
‘regularity’, ‘law’, or ‘tendency’, depending on how far we dare to tread. We
may ask for example to what extent the postulation of universals is restraining
our focus on mainstream, prototypical translation in contemporary developed
world to the exclusion on more marginal and historical translation practices.
Given that the accumulated evidence is still scarce, it is impossible to tell
how general we can get in our descriptions – without ending up with truisms
such as ‘all translations involve two linguistic codes’ or other general statements
which follow from the definition of translation. Disputes about such
uninformative top-level generalisations would then boil down to controversies
about definitions of translations. Clearly, our theoretical framework largely determines
our possibilities of seeing the object, thus we cannot naively wait for
the evidence to accumulate until there is enough to resolve the issues. Yet by
making strong claims in the field, and by imposing strong frameworks on our
data, we stand a chance of seeing the limits of a new approach, as well as its
strengths. We hope that this volume makes a contribution to the search for
generalities in translation studies, the methodological solutions available, and
the emerging evidence on the kinds of generalities that research on a larger
scale than before is bringing forth, enabling us to fine-tune, modify, and question
earlier hypotheses. On a more practical but no less important level, the
applicability of the hypotheses and findings to translator education is always a
concern for translation studies.
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