ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is structured in terms of paradigms rather than individual theories, theorists, or schools. It explains the terms "theory" and "paradigm", and how theorization can be related to translation practice. Translators are theorizing all time. Once they have identified a translation problem, they usually have to decide between several possible solutions. Let's say one have to translate the English term "Tory" employed to designate the Conservative Party in Britain. People engaged in that activity come up with results that could be of interest to psycholinguistics. But that finding seems almost totally irrelevant to anyone working within equivalence paradigm. The author talking about paradigms based on equivalence, purposes, descriptions, uncertainty, localization, and cultural translation. The order of the paradigms is very roughly chronological, starting around the 1960s and reaching the present day, except for "uncertainty" paradigm, which was present all the way through.
