The Sociology of Translation: Outline of an Emerging Field

This article explores the emerging field of the sociology of translation, focusing especially on two key areas: literary translation and news translation. While literary translation is a major area in translation studies, news translation has until recently received relatively little attention. It is argued that a sociological input to the study of both literary and news translation reveals not only important aspects of the social context in which translation occurs and contributes to a renewed understanding of the field, but also makes translation studies relevant to other disciplines, in particular sociology and globalisation research.