Philosophy

Philosophy is here understood as the discipline studying the very constructs we use to analyze the world and engage with it. The philosophy of Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) thus tackles the concepts, theories and models that structure practices in the field as well as their foundations, assumptions and committments both about translation and interpreting and about the world. In other words, the philosophy of a discipline is its epistemology, the theory of the ways in which scholars generate knowledge and its implications and validity. A “client discipline” in its inception, TIS borrowed models and frameworks from more established fields of inquiry, bringing along diverging epistemic traditions. Some of these perspectives informing TIS subfields differ in their conceptualization of the world. However, since James Holmes´s seminal map and in the wake of Gideon Toury´s work, the discipline evolved according to the shared assumptions and commitments entailed by a descriptive agenda: cross-linguistic phenomena can be construed and then be the object of fallible empirical observation from which logical conclusions can be derived. This epistemic stance has also been subject to criticism and refinement. The evolution of TIS philosopy can be inscribed in a genealogy of thought that stems from 18^th century empiricism, problematises positivist positions (scientism) and accepts aspects of postmodern theory that don’t fall into the paradoxes of relativism. Recent developments in the epistemology of TIS acknowledge and increasing interest in the diversity of epistemic and methodoloical traditions in the field with proposals for intradisciplinary dialogue. Currently held epistemological assumptions cohere with actual practices within the research community, as well as with the disciplinary objectives of impacting reality and professional practice that we find in virtually all strands of TIS research, from research action interventions to theoretical developments of models of the translating mind and retranslations of literary classics.