Translation Studies From The Economic Perspective: A Preliminary Study

Translation studies has been an independent discipline with obvious interdisciplinaryfeatures, whose theoretical basis has benefited a lot from such disciplines as linguistics,philosophy, aesthetics, and politics.However, regretfully, economics has been nearly absent in translation studies thoughnowadays it has been playing a critical role in social sciences and humanities andtranslation studies is of course part of social sciences and humanities. By now, hardly hasany translation scholar publicly urged for the introduction of economics into translationstudies. And even though the interactions between economic factors and translation havebeen touched upon in some translation scholars' articles and monographs, suchpresentations are loosely organized and far from being systemic.In view of the interactions between economic factors and translation which weshould not neglect any longer, this thesis, serving as a pavement for the construction of amore nearly systematic framework of translation studies from the economic perspective(TSEP), first tries to justify the necessity and feasibility of TSEP, then point out theeconomic root of translation, the characteristics of translation as an interest-drivenactivity, an investment, and a commodity production, etc., and finally elaborate on theinfluence of economic factors on some issues of translation, including such topics astranslation as a profession, female participation in translation and translation studies, andtranslators' status at different historical periods and their viewpoints on translation.