ABSTRACT
In a mature discipline, textbooks are said to rewrite history so that the state of
the art can be presented in a coherent manner (see Garnham 1994: 1123). In the
young discipline of interpreting studies, which has yet to reach maturity, my task
for this book was not so much rewriting but writing in the first place. There has in
fact been no previous attempt by a single author to give a comprehensive and
balanced account of this field that would include all its ramifications. The aim of
providing students, research-minded teachers and practitioners of interpreting as
well as scholars in related fields with a broad and accessible overview of interpreting
studies as an academic field of study thus presupposes a newly developed ‘vision’
of the discipline.
