The Translation Professions

Chapter 8 addresses the question of how and to what extent translation practices have become professions. In sociology, a profession is understood as an occupation that has been formally established, with boundaries determined by a canonized body of knowledge and formulated ethics, methods and technologies and recognition and authority given by the state. In contrast, translation occupations mostly form a heteronomous field that lacks formalized standards and controls. The chapter argues that this reflects a tension between professionalization as defined in sociology and ‘the rules of art’ or ‘the intellectual field’ as described by Bourdieu. In the latter, norms and value-scales depend on practitioners’ ethos and images rather than on institutional parameters.