ABSTRACT
Developing and applying some basic concepts concerning the object to be studied. By extension, the general problem of working definitions also touches on technical operations like fixing the chronological, geographical or cultural boundaries of a list. The author's prime concern is with ways of defining translations. Common sense might suggest that problems involving definitions should be solved prior to the actual compiling of lists; people decide to study a certain field before go out and create a corpus to represent that field. In practice, though, most of the serious problems with definitions crop up in the course of actual empirical work. The most notorious case is Gideon Toury's recommendation that, when compiling lists, 'a 'translation' taken to be any target-language utterance which is presented or regarded as such, on whatever grounds'.
