The discipline of translation studies has gained increasing importance at the beginning of the 21st century as a result of rapid globalization and the development of computer-based translation methods. Today, changing political, economic, health, and environmental realities across the world are generating previously unknown inter-language communication challenges that can only be understood through a socially-oriented and data-driven approach. The Oxford Handbook of Translation and Social Practices draws on a wide array of case studies from all over the world to demonstrate the value of different forms of translation - written, oral, audiovisual - as social practices that are essential to achieve sustainability, accessibility, inclusion, multiculturalism, and multilingualism.
Edited by Meng Ji and Sara Laviosa, this timely collection illustrates the manifold interactions between translation studies and the social and natural sciences, enabling for the first time the exchange of research resources and methods between translation and other domains' experts. Twenty-nine chapters by international scholars and professional translators apply translation studies methods to a wide range of fields, including healthcare, environmental policy, geological and cultural heritage conservation, education, tourism, comparative politics, conflict mediation, international law, commercial law, immigration, and indigenous rights. The articles engage with numerous languages, from European and Latin American contexts to Asian and Australian languages, giving unprecedented weight to the translation of indigenous languages. The Handbook highlights how translation studies generate innovative solutions to long-standing and emerging social issues, thus reformulating the scope of this discipline as a socially-oriented, empirical, and ethical research field in the 21st century.