Translatology - 2

I've been reading Brian Harris's interesting paper on the origins of translatology (traductologie), the concept and discipline which he named and founded, and am left with two overriding initial impressions: one is that the term itself denotes something very simple - the idea and practice of "reflections on translation". The other is that the term "translation" itself covers a vast area of meaning, from the literal ("A process by which a spoken or written [or signed] utterance takes place in one [natural] language which is intended and presumed to convey the same meaning as a previously existing utterance in another [such] language") to the religious and the metaphysical. The author comments:

Whenever I address professional translators or translation teachers about Natural Translators, I have to preface it by explaining that what I mean by ‘translator’ is not what they understand by ‘translator’; it is because I am speaking in a different paradigm and describing a different object from the ones they are used to. If they do not accept the paradigm shift, they will not accept that what I am talking about is translation, nor even be interested in it.

See also in this blog: Translatology