ABSTRACT
The practice of indirect translation (ITr), here understood as a translation of a translation (see Gambier 1994, 413; 2003, 57), has a long-standing history (e.g. the Bible, I Ching, Shakespeare translation or the activity of the so-called Toledo School), widespread use in various areas of today’s society (e.g. audiovisual, computer-assisted and literary translation, localization) and, arguably, a promising future (e.g. due to globalization and the increasingly high number of working languages in international organizations, which entails editing documents via the linguae francae). Despite all this, ITr has traditionally attracted only marginal attention from translation scholars and only in recent years has it become a more popular concept in translation studies (TS) research. This growing popularity is evident from the noticeable surge in the number of scientific publications (see Pięta 2017, in this special issue) and academic events (e.g. those held in Barcelona, Germersheim and Lisbon in 2013), as well as the founding in 2016 of an international network of researchers working on ITr (IndirecTrans, https://www.indirectrans.com">www.indirectrans.com). Such developments have made a significant contribution by, for example, challenging the conventional binarism in the study of translation or offering insights into the historiography of intercultural relationships and the complex role of intermediary centres in the cross-cultural transfer between peripheries. However, ITr research remains very fragmented and this concept is thus still largely undertheorized, and its position within TS still marginal. Research has not kept pace with the rapidly evolving practice.
