Transnational and global approaches in translation studies: Methodological observations

This chapter critiques methodological nationalism and binary categories in translation studies. The national story of translation is traced from the Renaissance up until its uncritical adoption when the discipline of translation studies was established around the 1960s. Despite some new directions in research, it is argued that a thorough revision of vocabularies and new methodologies is still needed to definitively break with lingering national and binary frameworks. Lawrence Venuti’s foreignisation is challenged due to its most problematic but previously overlooked aspect: its reliance on national paradigms and circumscribed domestic and foreign groups. In the context of globalisation’s shifting frameworks of self and solidarity, an empirical approach to networks of intersectionally complex readers in transnational localities is proposed, along with a sociological constructivist approach to groups and cultural narratives.