TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATION STUDIES IN THE JAPANESE CONTEXT

With James Holmes’s paper titled “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” in 1972, the translation activity gradually initiated its attempts to become an academic discipline, and the product and function dimensions of the translation activity as well as its process dimension gained importance. Until today, a wide range of translation studies literature has been created both through original and translated sources. However, when the relevant literature is examined, it is seen that most of the sources are of Western origin. However, there are also sources in the field of translation studies in the east and the far east, but even these resources have to be written in English, which is a global language, in order to reach a wide range of audiences. But this is not the main issue here. The real issue is the fact that Western writers make more contributions to translation studies than Eastern writers. There are some reasons for this. In a sense, the West is more developed than the East in terms of scientific developments. However, since the history of translation is an activity as old as the history of the humanity, eastern scientists also support this activity on a scientific basis and with scientific approaches related to the translation process thanks to their own studies and sources in the field. In this study, the perception of the Far East on the translation process and translation studies are examined in the Japanese Context. Besides, the views of the Far Eastern countries such as Japan on the translation and translation studies, their contributions to this scientific field, the theories and approaches they have been developing so far, the text types they are interested in and specific translation problems are examined in this study. It is also expected that this paper will contribute to the emergence of different and innovative theoretical/applied studies in order to support the evolutionary structure of translation studies, especially in the direction of translation needs in the Far East.

Keywords

Translation studies, history of translation, translation theories, translation approaches, translation process, Far East, Japan.