Reviews on the Turns of Translation Studies and the Definitions of Translation

With the development of such disciplines as linguistics, literature, sociology, anthropology, psychology and the rise of deconstructionism, post colonialism, feminism, more and more theories are applied to translation studies since the 1950s. The introduction of the theories from various kinds of thoughts and disciplines not only offers new perspectives for translation studies, but also brings new turns to it. As a specific turn of translation studies is one of the nuclear parts of translation studies, the study of translation and its turns attracts some scholars’ attentions. Abroad, the representative figures are André Lefevere, Susan Bassnett, Mary Snell-Hornby, Jeremy Munday, and Edwin Gentzler and so on. In China, there are few scholars such as Wang Ning, Lü Jun, Xie Tianzheng have ever studied on the turns in translation studies. Owing to the role translation definition plays in translation studies as well as the turns of the methodology, the aspects of the research background are viewed in this paper: the studies on the translation turns and the definitions of translation at home and abroad. Based on literature review and comparative analysis, the paper finally comes to the conclusion: although translation studies have seen a great number of turns, few scholars studied turns of translation systematically and showed interests in the influence of the translation definitions on the turns