Translation 3.0: A Blueprint for Translation Studies in the Digital Age

Abstract

At the close of the second decade of the twenty-first century, Translation Studies has evolved into an accepted and even booming discipline in higher education. Since translation touches on every aspect of scholarship, learning and communication, especially in the age of globalization and digital communication, universities that don’t already have Translation Studies programs are contemplating how to begin. This document is a blueprint, a guide, to understanding the explosive growth of the discipline and how to structure an approach to Translation Studies that meets the needs of students, faculty, administration and the publics served by a university. The blueprint examines Translation Studies as a discipline over the last 20 years by reviewing six university Translation Studies programs as case studies and analyzing their growth and evolution in the context of dramatic technologically-driven changes in society. The analysis shows that new translation programs have emerged at universities in cities that experience robust economic and population growth, evidence strong cultural and literary roots and are based in areas strong in technological innovation. But the main driver of success in creating new Translation Studies programs is the presence of activist faculty who passionately support and advocate for a Translation Studies program. Translator training and translation research and scholarship are now on equal footing, as academia begins to understand that the two are inextricably connected. This text is one piece of a multi-faceted Public Scholarship dissertation project. The elements in full are: 1.Translation 3.0: A Blueprint for Translation Studies in the Digital Age (120-page monograph), 2.Can Google Translate Literature? (40-page scholarly article), Translation3point0.wordpress.com (Spain in translation website with articles and data visualization). Taken in full, this project explains but also models the activity of a translation studies hub, a center of activity for a discipline that touches on all others and is a crucial element of twenty-first century higher education.