La traduzione nella cultura anglosassone contemporanea:tendenze e prospettive.

Studies on translation in the Anglo-Saxon world reflect the diversity in approaches to be found in the field of translation research worldwide. The main dichotomy seems still to be the linguistic / literary approach although in rather less clear-cut and opposing terms than in the past. Most translation scholars today can be collocated somewhere along the continuum between these two fronts and represent currents of thought that have given rise to extremely fruitful research in both translation theory and practice. An interdisciplinary approach is becoming evident in studies on translation in the English-speaking world, which are now grouped together under the name of Translation Studies. Translation Studies, first introduced in 1972 by James S. Holmes, was initially used to refer to a group of scholars that saw literary translation as their main area of study but, it has now come to refer to the academic discipline of translation as a whole in the English-speaking world. The interrelation between translation and communication lies at the basis of all areas of translation studies, whether literary or linguistic. It may therefore be said that the linguistic approach is an important facet of translation studies and cannot be overlooked in a general description of the discipline. The advent of new paradigms on the literary scene, together with the influence of Polysystem theory, provided translation scholars with clear insights into the way translations function within the general literary system and offered a framework for further research. Translation and translations are studied within a comparative literature framework in a historical perspective and research has focussed on history, culture, ideology, visibility and the related concept of power. What emerges from this overview of Translation Studies in the Anglo-Saxon world is that it is a constantly-expanding discipline full of exciting prospects for the future. Various groups of scholars are working in a variety of fields but with a common aim and purpose: that of reaching a better understanding of translation and of establishing more effective tools for describing and explaining it. An area where this is already a reality is computerised corpora studies. Translation scholars now have access to large computerised corpora of translated texts as well as texts written directly in the language. Using specific interrogation software, scholars can study the principles that govern translation praxis on extensive material. Such large-scale descriptive studies obviously offer an excellent opportunity to verify linguistic and cultural patterns of translational behaviour already identified by translation scholars on relatively small and fragmented corpora of texts. Although these studies have not been carried out on extensive corpora as yet, it can be stated with reasonable confidence that the combination of new technologies and Translation Studies hold out promising prospects for the future and offer an opportunity of bridging the gap between the various branches of the discipline.