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Article published In:
Twenty Years EST: Same place, different times
Edited by Michael Boyden
[Target 26:2] 2014
► pp. 206–223

Instrumental thinking in Translation Studies

| Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

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.

Keywords: instrumental thinking, pre-constructed notions, market-orientation, translation as instrument, transparency and opaqueness of translation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Instrumental thinking as a critical concept
  • 3.Instrumental thinking in Translation Studies
  • 4.Competence: A pre-constructed concept
  • 5.Translation as an ‘instrument’
  • 6.Switching between transparency and opaqueness, translation(-related) practice and the discourse on translation: An example
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 June 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.26.2.03diz
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