Translation in History: Some Comments

Abstract

Despite the trend towards the globalization of culture of which we are hearing so much, ideas and intellectual practices still do not travel very rapidly between continents or even between disciplines. For example, most professional historians of my acquaintance are hardly aware, if at all, of the discipline - or interdisciplinary crossroads - of Translation Studies, still less of its possible relevance to their own work. For this reason I was especially pleased to have the opportunity to read Georges Bastin's article on the need, as he puts it, to rewrite the history of Spanish America from the point of view of translators and to examine the role of translation in history.