Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book charts the history of the relationship between the study of languages on the one hand and of translation and interpreting on the other hand, in the 20th and 21st centuries. It deals with accounts of the nature of meaning, and with the comfort translators may draw from Austin's (1962) and Searle's (1969) accounts of speech acts. The book explains the role of speech sounds in interpreting, focusing on pauses, speech rate and segmentation, intonation and fundamental frequency, and accentuation and stress. It focuses on cases in which this is especially problematic, namely cases in which the interpreter works without previous knowledge of the texts to be translated. The book concludes by examining the need for and interest in historically and culturally grounded studies of rhetoric and translation that focus on regional and contextual differences.