While the humanities emphasize logical reasoning and philosophical speculation, the social sciences focus on empirical research. Translation studies in China have long followed the tradition of the humanities to closely observe and reflect on translation itself.

At present, humanities-oriented and social science-oriented translation studies co-exist in China. As the attention of the translation community converges on communication phenomena, audience studies are becoming a focus area equipped with increasingly scientific approaches, in addition to in-depth research on translation itself. Translation communication has become a new field of interest for many disciplines.

Translation communication acts as the “ferryman” of knowledge across disciplines. The notion of “translation communication” has empowered many disciplines in recent years, broadening their scope while increasing their value and vitality. It can be said that translation communication is not only a “booster” needed by almost all disciplines, but also a “transfer station” where different disciplines interact.

Cultural translation, social or sociological translation, political translation, ecological translation, linguistic translation, among others, are new forms of disciplinary content resulting from the integration of translation with multiple disciplines. They continuously expand disciplinary boundaries through various communication means, creating new growth engines for disciplinary development.

From an interdisciplinary perspective, disciplinary knowledge expanded through translation communication gradually becomes special fields and even new disciplines due to their unique, communicative and universal nature. These new fields or disciplines can be called “intermediate disciplines.”

Facilitated by translation, a variety of disciplines can become interdisciplinary and freed from the constraints or barriers of localized knowledge, wisdom and intelligence. Translation communication empowers disciplinary development by helping it break through physical, linguistic, and spatiotemporal limitations, thus enabling the crosslinguistic-cultural existence, dissemination, and development of different disciplines.

Translation communication studies serve as an empowering theory that can help multiple disciplines unlock their potential. The dissemination of disciplinary theories, knowledge, ideas, and wisdom primarily relies on bilingual translation methods and cross-domain transmission. The systematic knowledge in the source texts from various disciplines is transformed at the physical level through pragmatic means or grammatical units such as words, sentences and texts. Its content, meaning, and value ultimately “land” at the psychological level through the comprehension and acceptance on the part of the target language audience.

The source language knowledge circulates, becomes rooted, and recirculates in its “social-cultural” system through social interaction of the target language audience. It may even return with a new look in certain “linguistic-cultural” environments, or circulate back to the source language culture. This suggests that translation communication is always involved in the evolution, variation, integration, return, and interaction of knowledge across fields, cultures, and systems.

Translation communication, though based on the text, can also carry the text far away. The quality of translation determines, to some extent, the effectiveness of communication. The latter, including the acceptance of the translated text by the audience, affects translation as well. The audience can thus be regarded as the “barometer” of translation communication. Along with the translation market, translation studies are witnessing a “communication turn,” seeing more scholars turning their attention to textual translation communication overseas.

Translation communication studies embody the trend towards the refinement of translation studies in many disciplines. Translation studies in contemporary China are no longer satisfied with “artistic” self-admiration and closed disciplinary self-consistency. Rather, they are gradually moving beyond content analysis and comparative research at the textual level to become more scientific.

Zhang Shengxiang is a professor in the School of Foreign Languages at Suzhou University of Science and Technology.