ABSTRACT
Discussions about the future of translation and machine translation (MT) sparked by the advent of neural machine translation (NMT) revealed a lack of common understanding about “what translation is” even among those who are involved in translation-related activities. Although we have witnessed steady improvements in describing and modelling translation processes in translation studies, there is clearly a need for further explicitation of knowledge about translation processes, and to do so the development of a common means for communication is essential. This chapter confirms these points and clarifies the role and status of explicit knowledge about translation processes and of metalanguages for describing this knowledge in the current situation. It shows that such explicit knowledge and metalanguages amount to technologies of translation in its wider sense, as contrasted with technologies for translation, and contends that it is an essential pillar not only for further development and social acceptance of translation industries, but also for the further development of technologies for translation. The chapter then provides an overview of the book, situating its separate parts and chapters within the overall framework of translation processes and showing their interconnections.
