In the late 1970s a new academic discipline was born: Translation Studies. We could not read literature in translation, it was argued, without asking ourselves if linguistics and cultural phenomena really were ‘translatable’ and exploring in some depth the concept of ‘equivalence’. When Susan Bassnett’s Translation Studies appeared in the New Accents series, it quickly became the one introduction every student and interested reader had to own. Professor Bassnett tackles the crucial problems of translation and offers a history of translation theory, beginning with the ancient Romans and encompassing key twentieth-century work. She then explores specific problems of literary translation.
