What do people think of translation in the different historical, cultural and linguistic traditions of the world? How many uses has translation been put to? How distant from one another are the concepts of translation found in the different traditions? These are some of the questions A World Atlas of Translation addresses. Its twenty-one reports give us pictures taken from the inside, both from traditions that are well represented in the literature and from the many that (for now) are not.

But the Atlas is not content with documenting – no map is this innocent. In fact, the wealth of information collected and made accessible by its reporters can be useful to gauge the dispersion of translation concepts across traditions. As you read its reports, the Atlas will keep asking “How far apart do these concepts look to you?” Finally and more ambitiously, the reports can help us test the hypothesis that a cross-cultural notion of translation exists. In this respect, the Atlas is mostly a proof of concept. It hopes to encourage further fact-based research in quest of a robust and compelling unifying notion of translation.

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Table of Contents
Preface

Chapter 1. Translating in the Pacific: Rendering the Christian Bible in the islanders’ tongues
Joseph P. Hong
Chapter 2. Recent tradition in Australia
Adolfo Gentile
Chapter 3. Japanese conceptualizations of ‘translation’
Judy Wakabayashi
Chapter 4. Contemporary views of translation in China
Leo Tak-hung Chan
Chapter 5. From plagiarism to incense sticks: The making of self and the other in Thai translation history
Phrae Chittiphalangsri
Chapter 6. More or less “translation”: Landscapes of language and communication in India
Rita Kothari and Krupa Shah
Chapter 7. The Persian tradition
Omid Azadibougar and Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam
Chapter 8. The notion of translation in the Arab world: A critical developmental perspective
Salah Basalamah
Chapter 9. Traditions of translation in Hebrew culture
Nitsa Ben-Ari and Shaul Levin
Chapter 10. Altaic tradition: Turkey
Cemal Demircioğlu
Chapter 11. Translation tradition throughout South African history
Maricel Botha and Anne-Marie Beukes
Chapter 12. Translation traditions in Angola
Riikka Halme-Berneking
Chapter 13. The culture(s) of translation in Russia
Brian James Baer and Sergey Tyulenev
Chapter 14. The concept of translation in Slavic cultures
Zuzana Jettmarová
Chapter 15. The Greek-speaking tradition
Simos Grammenidis and Georgios Floros
Chapter 16. Latin/Romance tradition
Lieven D’hulst
Chapter 17. Germanic tradition
Gauti Kristmannsson
Chapter 18. Hispanic South America
Álvaro Echeverri and Georges L. Bastin
Chapter 19. The history of translation in Brazil through the centuries: In search of a tradition
Dennys Silva-Reis and John Milton
Chapter 20. Translation in Central America and Mexico
Nayelli Castro
Chapter 21. Translation and North America: A reframing
María Constanza Guzmán and Lyse Hébert
Postface
Bio-notes
Index of Languages, people, toponyms
Name index
Subject index

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