ABSTRACT
Are history and description compatible concepts in tTranslation Sstudies? Description has a strongly scientific connotation, whereas history belongs to the humanities. Description is typically the representation of a situation, whereas the representation of events is typically called narration. Nonetheless, dDescriptive tTranslation Sstudies (DTS) is a research paradigm that, from the 1970s onward, has historicizsed translation research, by systematically drawing attention to the historical nature of translation. This essay intends to illuminate this counterintuitive match between DTS and history. It analyzses the tension between DTS’s fundamental interest in history and its structuralist tendency to model humanistic research on the sciences. Furthermore, it identifies a series of claims concerning translation and history, and signals to what extent these claims were defended by DTS only or mainly, or advanced by DTS and shared by others, or advanced by rivaling approaches as a critique of DTS. This discussion will throw light on the relative unity or internal diversity of DTS.
