Method in translation history

This text aims to show that the history of translation need not be an obscure subdiscipline.

If studied, it can trace the past of suppressed intermediaries whose work might change our ideas of what cultures are, of what kind of future we can expect from globalization.

The author sets about undoing many of the dominant models of translation history, positing that the object of this history should be translators as people, that researchers are subjectively involved in their object, that cultural systems are based on social will, that translators work in intercultural spaces, and that a model of co-operation through negotiation may be applied to the way translators work between cultures.

The proposed methodology is constructive, showing how many empirical techniques can be developed and applied.

Finding its focus in historical debates, this text should help create contemporary debate.