The Human Linguistic View of Translation (LACUS Conference, 10-14 June 2008) Lara Burazer University of Ljubljana Lara.burazer@guest.arnes.si ABSTRACT In the field of Translation Studies (TS) the underlying debate at present seems to focus on the issues of the divergence arising between the two fundamental research paradigms – the ESP (empirical science paradigm) and the LAP (liberal arts paradigm), which revolves around TS being regarded as scientific and rightfully accepted by the scientific community. Looking through the prism of the theoretical scope of the Hard Science or Human Linguistics (Yngve 1996), we might be able to offer a solution to the question, one also pertaining to linguistics, of how to make the soft science Translation Studies more hard scientific. The authors take a closer look at the object of study as defined in translation studies (Hatim and Mason 1997, Nord 2005, Vermeer 2000) and related to discourse analysis (Kintsch 1988, Minsky 1974, Sperber and Wilson 1997) and propose a hard science human linguistics approach focusing on the physical domain real-world objects rather than on logical domain concepts. The paper diverts the focus of research within TS from texts to the human beings involved in the process of translation. Studying translators and other people involved in this process, with their relevant linguistic properties and relating contexts in which these have been formed, we approach the study of translation from the point of view of expectation procedures, which have been well defined in previous human linguistics research papers.