This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License 43 L2 Translation at the Periphery: A Meta-Analysis of Current Views on Translation Directionality1 Saber

Directionality as defined by Beeby is "whether translators are working from a foreign language into their mother language or vice versa " (84).In this sense, directionality does not mean the direction of translation which exists between source language (SL) and target language (TL), but rather, it refers to the direction between the mother tongue and the foreign tongue of the translator, and thus the product of translation per se does not determine a translation’s direction. In order to understand the latter, one should look at the profile of the translator or what Stewart (1999) calls "characteristics or skills of the actual performer of the translation, " and whether the translator is working into or out of his native language. However, this does not imply that translation directionality only refers to the flow between one’s mother tongue and a foreign language or vice versa; it is also used to refer to translation from a second language to a third, four or even fifth language or vice versa. However, the problem is not so much with the number of languages involved as it is with the diversity of definitions. In Translation Studies, translation into a mother tongue and a foreign language have been termed differently by various scholars, and as Beeby states, "there is no agreement as to the terminology for translation onto the foreign language"(64)