chapter 18 Status, origin, features* Translation and beyond Dirk Delabastita University of Namur, Belgium his essay revisits Toury’s concept of assumed translation as well as his threefold distinction between system, norm and performance. It pushes the historical relativism which is inherent in these notions to the extreme by arguing that in our theoretical models of translation (and of discourse more generally!) we need to make an absolute distinction between the status ascribed to textual materials and discursive acts (e.g. as “translations”, “originals”, or as something else), their actual textual origins (inasmuch as these can be reconstructed) and the features they show (as brought to light with the help of diferent possible descriptive models at various levels of analysis). his radical move simultaneously undoes the conceptual autonomy of Translation Studies as a discipline and injects multilingualism and intercultural contact straight into the heart of any study of discourse. It thus creates a comprehensive framework that accommodates traditional deinitions and practices of translation but also less conventional ones, as well as a host of other, more or less related discursive phenomena, indeed inviting a study of their mutual relationships and functional interactions. By the same token, the status/origin/features scheme enables, nay even requires, the “international turn” in translation studies to happen in earnest. Keywords: assumed translation; status/origin/features of translations; the international turn; autonomy of translation studies System, norms, performance Perhaps the greatest single git of Gideon Toury to translation studies is that he has sharpened our sense of the historical variability of translation: “diference across cul- tures, variation within a culture and change over time” (Toury 1995: 31). He has also given us the theoretical tools to model this variability and thus to observe it more ef- iciently. hese models have evolved over time but the concept of norms has never stopped being central to them. In much of my own research I have made ample use of * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2006 CETRA summer session. hanks are due to Andrew Chesterman and to all participants for their useful feedback.