Transnationalism and aspects of the history of translation practice: from antiquity to early 21^st Century

Abstract

This paper seeks to use the concept of trans-nationalism to explain developments in approaches to translation practice. It relies on both the theories of trans-nationalism and historical revisionism to explain the different levels of international contacts that have characterized translation activities from Antiquity to the early 21^st century, and subjects the interpretations of translation phenomena of the past to new questions and new perspectives gained with the passage of time and space. Thus, using the deductive approach, the study gathered and analyzed secondary data which (a) traced the history of translation from Antiquity;(b) situated the period of application of principles to translation practice; (c) situated the transnational context(s) of such applications; and (d) explained the significance of the four major periods (Antiquity - 4^th century AD; 5^th century AD - 12^th century AD; 13^th century AD - 18^th century AD; and 19^th century AD to date) that have characterized the evolution of all these elements across frontiers and concludes that Arjun Appadurai’s (2001) concepts of ethnoscape, technoscape, financescape, mediascape and ideoscape have contributed to the development of translation practice. The paper further maintains that the positive developments recorded in translation principles and practice over time have been due to the rich heterogeneous transnational backgrounds of translation scholars whose activities across the world have greatly influenced the profession.

Keywords: History, Development, Translation, Trans-nationalization, De-territorialization