Recent Developments in Translation Studies as Seen from Three Representative
Books Published in the 1990’s
Dan SHEN

Abstract: In the field of translation studies, despite the existence of
multiple approaches, two trends of development seem to have been dominating
in recent years: one based on linguistics in the wide sense; the other
marked by a historical-descriptive orientation. While the two trends of
development are contrastive with each other, they share one thing in common,
namely, both being essentially empirical, forming a contrast to translation
studies with a somewhat ‘purely’ theoretical orientation. The present paper
offers a discussion of some recent developments in the field by way of
reviewing three representative books published in the 1990’s. Through the
present review, we may get a glimpse not only of the characteristics of
the two major trends of development, but also of certain features of the
theoretical versus the empirical orientation.
Key words: translation studies, developments, representative books

20世纪80年代初以来，西方翻译研究进展迅速。如果说西方译学研究在60和70年代的突飞猛进主要得益于语言学的快速发展的话，在近二十年里，文化研究、文学研究、人类学、信息科学、认知科学、心理学和广义上的语言学等均对翻译学科的发展起了较大的推进作用（参见Gentzler
1993, Neubert & Shreve 1992）。尽管翻译研究的方法纷呈不一，但近年来可以说有两大派别占据了主导地位：一派以广义上的语言学（尤其是语篇语言学和话语分析）为基础，致力于建构和发展经验性质的翻译科学；另一派则从历史的角度通过描写的方式来研究翻译问题，意在揭示翻译实践与研究中蕴含的文化与政治因素（参见Venuti, 1997）。