Translation Studies as an Interdiscipline: Plurality of Research Approaches

摘要

This study aims at examining the plurality of research approaches to Translation Studies given its interdisciplinarity. By comparing the four principal research approaches categorized by Chesterman - textual, cognitive, sociological and cultural - this paper critically reflects upon the properties of each approach, concluding that the maturity and stability of a research approach to Translation Studies is concomitant with their ad-hoc disciplinary perspectives. This research is therefore original by exhorting that translation researchers refrain from becoming a perfectionist who attempts to account for all the relevant variables of a real-life situation involved in a translation act. Instead, the kinds of hypotheses, models, and theories proposed in Translation Studies concern tendencies rather than mechanical cause-and-effect and appropriate research approaches should be selected according to a specific research nature, question and object. Understanding this is essential to exploring meaning and context, the central notions of translation.