La traduttologia

The present paper provides an overview of the evolution and state-of-the-art of the multidiscipline of translation studies, by focusing on the developments that occurred almost simultaneously, albeit independently, within its two main research areas, the pure (descriptive and theoretical) and applied branches. It demonstrates how the more linguistically-oriented applied studies and the predominantly literary-based descriptive studies, while adopting different approaches, produced complementary and, in some respects, similar results, mainly thanks to their broad view of the phenomenon of translation, which is increasingly seen as a form of intercultural communication that takes place within clear-cut historical and socio-cultural settings. A brief discussion of the diachronic and cultural aspects of translation studies, supported by reference to fundamental bibliographical material, is followed by an in-depth investigation into how functional linguistic models and corpus linguistic methodologies have been integrated into the discipline, with a consequent shift from a prescriptive to a descriptive approach in almost all the fields of linguistics-based research on translation. Reference will then be made to the current proliferation of initiatives concerning translation training, publications and conferences, which bear witness to the extraordinary academic success of the discipline of translation studies over the last decade