Do we need a shared ground?

Instead of taking a stand on the individual theses presented by Andrew Chesterman (AC) and Rosemary Arrojo (RA), we will focus on the rationale of the three questions that they have chosen as sub-headings for their paper. The questions are: (1) What is Translation? (2) Why is This (Kind of) Translation Like This? and (3) What Consequences Do Translations Have? We feel that translation scholars answer these questions implicitly, if not explicitly, through the kind of research they advocate or do themselves. Thus there is a good justification to discuss them openly every now and then, and we appreciate the initiative taken by Chesterman and Arrojo (2000). AC and RA have answered these questions in such a way, however, that makes us wonder how far the common ground extends and whether it has a centre of any kind. In what follows we will look at the three questions to see how they might bear on a shared ground as we see it.