ABSTRACT
The introduction began by wondering why the study of literary translation in particular had remained a neglected field. Some lines of investigation, among them Frantisek Miko’s excursions into stylistics, were eventually discontinued. New accents emerged, as the encounter with the scholars from Israel and the Low Countries, each of whom brought their own special emphasis, produced a wholly new impetus and coalesced into a full-fledged programme. The empirical bias of the descriptive approach, and its primarily literary ambience, has meant that questions surrounding the production, reception and historical impact of translation – especially literary translation – have been prominent. If translation is conceptualized and delineated differently in different periods and communities, then studying this historical differentiation and its changing relations to other textual practices is preferable to a purported immanent description which can only reflect our contemporary view. The historical projection is increasingly being supplemented by a spatial and thematic opening up.
