Translation as an Enduring and Widespread Cultural Practice

This chapter questions the widespread term translation movement, as applied to the cultural activities of translating in the early Abbasid period, and the historiographical problems that its usage by various historians of science, philosophy and religion has created. It argues that in order to understand translating in its cultural meaning and contexts in Islamicate societies over a millennium, this term and its historiographical limitations should be abandoned in favor of the study of the huge variety of translation activities that took place in more than 40 languages.