Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari, eds. Constructing a Sociology of Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, “Benjamins Translation Library,” 2007, 226 p.

True to its title, Constructing a Sociology of Translation is an attempt to define the contours of a sociology of translation whose emergence is arguably underway. The volume consists of an introduction and four parts, containing a total of ten essays. In her detailed introduction, Michaela Wolf attempts to give an overview of (and sometimes assess), among other things, the central literature on translation as a social practice, the contributions of theories of sociology to the study of translation and the main developments in the sociology of translation. She also discusses the terminology of this new subfield, for example, “sociology of translation” (p. 31). The first part of the book contains two essays, one of which is written by Erich Prunč. In it, Prunč tries to show how (European) Translation Studies has contributed to the “subalternity” of the translator (p. 40). He also discusses the reasons for the dichotomy of the minor status of the translator and his/her essential “role in the construction of meaning in a transcultural exchange” (p. 39). In the other essay, Theo Hermans attempts to apply Niklas Luhmann’s ideas to translation. He sees (or rather imagines) translation as a “social system” (p. 66) in which the translator “disappears” (p. 62), thus foregrounding the social dimension of translation, i.e., its communicational aspects (pp. 62-63 and 66-67). The second part comprises three essays. Jean-Marc Gouanvic shows us how Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of “field” (p. 81), “habitus” (p. 82) and “illusio” (p. 87) can be usefully applied in thinking about translation as “a social practice” (p. 80). He ends his essay with a discussion on the “producing agent’s capital” (capital de l’agent producteur) and “international legitimacies” (légitimités internationales) (pp. 89-90) as well as the self-reflexivity of Translation Studies scholars (pp. 91-92). As for Johan Heilbron and Gisèle Sapiro, they suggest an “outline for a sociology of translation” (p. 93), inspired by Bourdieu’s theory, which will help overcome the limitations of the “interpretative approach to the text” and the “economic analysis of transnational exchanges” (pp. 93-94). In the third paper, Wolf attempts to “enhance” Bourdieu’s “theory of cultural production” (p. 109) in order to make possible an adequate “conceptualisation of a ‘mediation space’” (ibid.). She uses Homi Bhabha’s Third Space (p. 113) that, she maintains, can account for various transfer operations between fields and better reflect the specificity of the “translation domain” (p. 110). In the third part, composed of three essays, Mirella Agorni proposes a new model for Translation Studies which will bring together the otherwise diverging quantitative (descriptive) and qualitative (explanatory) approaches. She advocates “localism” (p. 126) (derived from Maria Tymoczko’s work), a concept that can help researchers explore an activity as complex as translation, whose practices vary in different cultures. In the following essay, Hélène Buzelin adopts Bruno Latour’s theory in order to shed light on translation “in the making” (p. 135). Her analysis concentrates on findings compiled during two-years of fieldwork on literary translation in three Montreal-based publishing houses. In the section’s final essay, Andrew Chesterman tries to place “translation sociology” (p. 172) at the centre of Translation Studies, in an effort to bridge the discipline’s different approaches and prevent its further fragmentation. Translation sociology, he argues, can provide Translation Studies with “bridge concepts” (ibid.) like “practice” (p. 176), “discourse” (ibid.), “habitus” (p. 177), “norms” (p. 178), “brief” and “strategy” (ibid.). In the fourth part of the book, Daniel Simeoni ponders the place of Translation Studies in the human and social sciences through a discussion of the evolution …