ABSTRACT
The concept of power entered our discipline in the 1980s, when descriptive studies of translation were invested in questions pertaining to ideology and politics. Research in travel and translation gives way to a very new avenue, translation and space, or to be more precise, the translation of space, whose main researcher is Sherry Simon. Pierre Bourdieu, whose theory of power has also greatly influenced translation studies, argues that those who hold power have the power to re-present reality through language: a reality we may not necessarily share. Taking power into account in contemporary translation studies tells us that 'all use of language reflects a set of users' assumptions which are closely bound up with attitudes, beliefs and value systems'. As Maria Tymoczko argues, the power turn focuses on issues of agency, on how translation can effect cultural change, and on the relation of translation to dominance, cultural assertion, cultural resistance and activism.
