Contesting translation: studies in honour of Mona Baker

Contesting Translation, a celebratory edited volume honours Professor Mona Baker, one of the most influential scholars in translation, interpreting and intercultural studies. The eleven original chapters were especially commissioned from scholars who have developed enduring personal, professional and intellectual connections with Baker through her teaching and research.

The chapters are framed by a reflective introduction, and clustered into three inter-related sections: ‘Trajectories and concepts’, ‘Narratives and corpora’, and ‘Activism and solidarity’, which together map the routes and approaches that characterise Baker’s oeuvre. Individual chapters offer studies on topics ranging from literary translation, knowledge translation, journalistic translation and museum translation to political and aspirational translation. Studies are situated in diverse temporal and geographical environments, extending from seventeenth-century Low Countries to present-day Palestine. Chapters resonate with each other through critical scholarly engagement with the history, discourse, and politics of translation, and through a shared interest in the significance of the stories we tell each other and ourselves.

Relevant for students new to translation and interpreting studies as well as established and emerging scholars more familiar with the field’s contours, Contesting Translation is a landmark contribution to a dynamic discipline that has itself been significantly shaped by one of its most forthright and creative scholars.