Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 26, Issue 2, 2014

As a social and political context for research on translation, the European Union offers pertinent commitments to multilingualism, inclusive territorial democracy, transparent governance and the welfare state, with enough public funding to pursue these aims seriously. All these features concern translation, not only to the extent that they create social demands for translations but more importantly in that they give our research an ethical and political dimension, in addition to the demands of various markets. However, when the consequences of these commitments are compared with actual European research and public policies concerning translation, several shortcomings become apparent. The comparison suggests that future tasks for Translation Studies in Europe should include: (1) serious attention to far more than the large territorial languages; (2) enhanced exchange with neighboring disciplines, especially with scholars working on language acquisition; (3) an acceptance that translated communication should concern involvement and interaction, in addition to public information; (4) a questioning of the Western translation form as the model best suited to interactive cross-lingual governance; and (5) experimentation with technologies that stimulate citizen involvement.

This paper concentrates on instrumental thinking to analyse the conceptualization of translation in praxis and theory. First, instrumental thinking is introduced as a general mode of thinking which can be traced across different academic disciplines. A critical position is adopted with reference to Horkheimer/Adorno and Bourdieu. Based on Bourdieu’s work on “the state of the unthought” and the “pre-constructed,” some examples from academic discourse are discussed to foreground how a certain type of instrumental thinking is linked to market-oriented politics and how this shapes concepts in academic discourse as well. It is argued that the effects of the instrumental can be found on several levels in Translation Studies and that these levels are interrelated. These include the ways translation is understood and approached in practice by interaction partners involved in translation and interpreting processes, in the discourses on translation and interpretation in fields outside academia, and in scholarly work on translation.

Umberto Eco’s statement “the language of Europe is translation” suggests that translation is one of the main assets of daily communication in Europe. While such a statement undoubtedly is a stand against national — or, in many instances, nationalistic — language cultures, it also raises a series of questions which can be discussed within a re-formulation of EST’s aims and scope: Which ‘Europe’ is meant here? What sort of translation concept underpins this statement? In which way do migration movements shape today’s translation landscapes? What are the control mechanisms behind the phenomenon of translation understood in Eco’s sense? This paper discusses the limits of Europeanness and its potentially transgressive nature against the backdrop of EST’s founding moment in Vienna and the city’s central shaping force in pluricultural issues in the Habsburg Monarchy. It argues that translation has the task of breaking the deadlock of identitarian differences and the political practices based on them. So, what is the impact of these reflections for future activities in EST?

The essay traces the position of the EST within the discipline of Translation Studies since the Society was established in 1992. The main emphasis is on the original objectives (as laid down in the Constitution) along with the changes naturally brought about by technological and sociological developments over the last twenty years. These involve the character of EST, the role of International English and the significance of Translation Studies, for which tentative prognoses are sketched in conclusion.

The author reviews ideas, projects and actions generated and implemented within and with EST over the past twenty years. He concludes in his analysis that predictors of success or failure for EST operations are individual motivation, organization with specific duties and institutional weight. He considers that EST is doing rather well, suggests that there is potential for development in service provision in the form of short courses provided by experts from within the Society, but that one should not be overambitious in terms of institutional influence.

The 20th anniversary of an association is never trivial, neither for the discipline represented nor for its members. Furthermore, during these twenty years, Translation Studies has gone through extraordinary changes. We propose not to articulate the efforts of the EST and the developments in TS in general, but to offer some suggestions to get a better perspective on the future.