Georges L. Bastin and Paul F. Bandia, eds. Charting the Future of Translation History. Ottawa, University of Ottawa Press, 2006, 344 p.

If a single keyword were to be selected from all 17 essays that make up Charting the Future of Translation History, that would be “gaps”. This collection of studies, drawn from the XVII^th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Translation Studies (CATS), attempts to point at several lacunae surrounding research on the history of translation since the mid-1960s. Contributors discuss both translation as the object of historical study and history as the object of translation studies—i.e. the role of translation in the (de)construction of history. The book is divided into two main blocks: ‘Methodology’ and ‘Current Discourses.’ In the former, seven renowned specialists discuss contemporary discourses on translation research; in the latter, ten case studies map translation in geographical and temporal zones. “Blank Spaces in the History of Translation” by Julio-César Santoyo reflects on neglected areas of translation and interpreting studies while summarizing the history of oral interpretation, intracultural translation, pseudo and self-translations, and translational mistakes. Particularly remarkable is his approach regarding the silent protagonism of translation in the construction of history, and the need to de-Westernize it by exposing texts outside the European tradition. Conversely, Georges L. Bastin’s “Subjectivity and Rigour in Translation History: The Latin American Case” revisits Western translation methodologies, revealing their inapplicability to alternative sociocultural realities. Bastin proposes a new paradigm for translation history in Latin America rooted in hybridity, contradictory totality, and non-dialectical heterogeneity. An autochthonous cultural model recognizes a Latin American contradictory and heterogeneous subjectivity, demanding a historical periodization specific to this particular conceptual framework, a task to which translation turns out central. Likewise, Clara Foz regards periodization useful in “Translation, History and the Translation Scholar”, but also partial and arbitrary. Through the analysis of the shifts in methodologies from positivist objectivity to post-structuralist deconstruction, Foz underscores that the role of history serves the ideologically-motivated and inaccurate delimitation of temporal stages, and reinforces cultural domination. Paul F. Bandia’s “The Impact of Postmodern Discourse on the History of Translation” posits that the overlapping of translation history with a Eurocentric conception of nation-states has shaped the sequential, homogenizing perspective in cultural studies prior to deconstructionist approaches. In this context, the task of the history of translation becomes, rather than reinforcing national boundaries, blurring them while raising a global, multicultural awareness and, like poststructuralist views have displayed, undo the linearity of history. Like Bandia, Reine Meylaerts criticizes the perspective of European nation-states on societal frameworks. “Conceptualizing the Translator as a Historical Subject in Multilingual Environments: A Challenge for Descriptive Translation Studies?” utilizes recent insights à propos Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus as plural and dynamic, as well the views of the translator as a historical subject displayed by Descriptive Translation Studies. Meylaerts focuses on a specific framework—literary translations from Flemish into French in interwar Belgium—to illustrate the role of translation in the delegitimization of certain tongues as literary languages and the perpetuation of the sociocultural superiority of others, to reveal the decisive role that translational choices (i.e. habituses) play in the relationship among territory, language, literature, and people as circumscribed by institutional and discursive structures. She concludes with a call for a redefinition of “source” and “target” to enable a flexible, communication-oriented perspective. Sergia Adamo’s “Microhistory of Translation” is another invitation to rethink the representation of historically marginalized subjects. Rejecting hermetic models that reconstruct the past via seemingly objective historical data, microhistory favors narrations of collective memory from minor, fragmentary, and disrupting data, a necessary step towards a more inclusive history of translation. Last but not least in the first section, Jesús Baigorri-Jalón’s “Perspectives on the History of Interpretation: Research Proposals” tackles gaps in the history …