ABSTRACT
Translation scholars wishing to understand translation as a social practice often look to sociological theories for inspiration. While the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu have attracted most attention, other sociological models, too, have been explored for the light they can shed on the world of translation. Social systems theory is part of a broader set of systems theories that all start from the fundamental distinction between a system and its environment. For a social system to emerge and to continue to exist, successive communications must interlink to form a chain. A communication itself is made up of three components: information, utterance and understanding. Since interlinking communications are the building blocks of social systems, the social system of translation must consist of communications recognized as being of a certain kind, that is, as translational or bearing on translation. Stringing together communications of this kind leads to the emergence of a distinct series and of associated patterns of expectation.
