Across Languages and Cultures 6 (2), pp. 143–172 (2005) 1585-1923/$ 20.00 © 2005 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest BACK TO TRANSLATION AS LANGUAGE BRIAN MOSSOP 1 , ERNST-AUGUST GUTT, JEAN PEETERS, KINGA KLAUDY, ROBIN SETTON AND SONJA TIRKKONEN-CONDIT 1 School of Translation Glendon College, York University 2275 Bayview Avenue, York Hall 241, Toronto, Ontario M4N 3M6, Canada Tel. 1-416-973-1142, Fax: 1-416-973-3325 E-mail: brmossop@yorku.ca Abstract: In this article, the six authors discuss the question of whether Translation Studies should devote more attention to the linguistic aspect of translation, in view of the tendency in recent years to focus on its social functioning. In the first part, each author tack- les one or more aspects of this issue; in the second part, the authors respond to each other’s views. Topics covered include what kind of language production translation is, whether translational language arises out of a particular form of communication or is itself a linguis- tic system, the relationship of Translation Studies to linguistics and other disciplines, the behaviour of particular language pairs when they clash during translation, translational lan- guage from the producer’s as opposed to the receiver’s viewpoint, and the relation of the linguistic to the social and to the cognitive. Reference is made to methodologies such as keystroke logging and the use of corpora, and also to a range of past and present linguistic approaches to translation, from comparative stylistics to relevance theory. Suggestions are offered regarding the directions which should be taken by linguistically oriented studies of translation. Key words: translational language, Translation Studies, interdisciplinarity, communi- cation, linguistics INTRODUCTION The title of this article may strike readers as odd. How can we go back to some- thing we never left, they may wonder. Certainly the Translation Studies litera- ture has never stopped talking about language. However there does seem to have been a shift in focus sometime around 1980 (with a certain amount of country-to-country variation). There was now less interest in the language pro- duced by translators as itself the object of study, and more interest in the social functioning of translations in the target culture and the intercultural aspect of translational communication. The translator’s linguistic selections now served, for example, as evidence of the social norms of translation.