George Steiner's After Babel in contemporary Translation Studies (original) (raw)

George Steiner’s monograph After Babel is a living plea for translation. For him, translation as meaning transfer is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather a basic anthropological activity and ‘formally and pragmatically implicit in every act of communication’ (Steiner 1975/1992: xii; cf. also 49). With such a view, he undermines the conceptualization of Translation Studies as merely one of the Communication Sciences, but rather presents the activity of translation as conditio sine qua non (p. 290) of all human communication and all human mental activity. The following is a brief outline of the main themes of Steiner’s book (I) before his reception in modern Translation Studies is traced (II).