Baumgarten, Stefan and Gagnon, Chantal (2016): Translating the European House. Discourse, Ideology and Politics – Selected Papers by Christina Schäffner. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 382 p.

Translation Studies (TS) is currently in the midst of a gradual generational change. Some of the most decisive scholars of the 20^th century are now retiring. Following in the footsteps of previous generations, these scholars are largely responsible for the independence of our discipline, its good epistemological health, its hybridity, and its creativity − in sum, its current status quo. They are also largely responsible for leaving behind a cohort of well-prepared academics. When masters give way, their disciples would do well to pause and review their roots before (hopefully) taking a leap forward. The present book, Translating the European House, is Stefan Baumgarten and Chantal Gagnon’s review of the work of an essential translation studies scholar, their PhD supervisor Christina Schäffner. Baumgarten and Gagnon’s contribution here is threefold. First, they have prepared two introductory chapters to the volume (“General Introduction” and “Political discourse analysis in a multilingual world”), in which they review Schäffner’s life and works and put both of them into context. Second, they have selected twelve of Schäffner’s most well-known papers on the topic of political discourse, presented in chronological order (chapters I to XII). Third, they have compiled Schäffner’s bibliography on the topic listed from 2016 to 1981 (“Publications by Christina Schäffner”). In the “General Introduction,” Baumgarten and Gagnon focus on Schäffner’s life. Originally from East Germany (Schlotheim), Schäffner started her academic career in 1969 at the then Karl Marx University (Leipzig). They follow her life to the culmination of her work in Translation Studies to where she has recently been awarded the title of Emeritus Professor at Aston University (Birmingham, UK). That the authors start the volume with some lines on Schäffner’s life is a felicitous decision. It is precisely her evolved position from Eastern Europe to the Western World, from the then “ostracised” Germanic tradition to the Anglo-Saxon epistemological hegemony, which gives her work a special resonance. With this position in life, it is no wonder Schäffner devotes her time to political discourse analysis, to multilingual and multicultural dissections and recontextualisations, to what she aptly calls “Critical Translation Studies” (p. 283) and to a united Europe, of course. It is no wonder either that she builds her examinations upon the frameworks developed by her predecessors and contemporaries at Western (often Anglo-Saxon) centres (Fillmore, Lakoff and Johnson, Fairclough) without abandoning her Leipzig text-linguistic training (Neubert). At the same time, she is open to the new developments being put forward by (young) Asian scholars (e.g., Kang). This book is a clear reminder of the fact that, in the same way Schäffner has accepted the challenge to contribute to making Translation Studies larger and stronger from her own vital stance (with her past influences and her newly acquired intertextual and interdiscursive inspirations), it is now time for a new generation to take a step forward and accept responsibility for performing research in a post-Brexit, post-truth world. In the second introduction to the volume “Political discourse analysis in a multilingual world,” Baumgarten and Gagnon perform three exercises of what they label “recontextualised recontextualization” (p. 5) along three dimensions (discursive, communicative and translational), around which Schäffner’s work revolves. With these exercises, the editors re-locate her “ideas and favoured concepts” (p. 5). In the first dimension, “International Security and Peace,” they point at discursive notions as taken from Fairclough (“discourse,” “social practice,” “discoursal practice,” “text,” etc.) and Bourdieu (“political field,” “political responsible agents,” etc.), which serve as the platform upon which to articulate other typically Schäffnerian concerns, such as “recontextualization,” “intertextuality,” “interdiscursivity” and “a free-floating web of discursive (i.e., thematic, attitudinal and linguistically inflected) constellations that are …