Translation Ethics

Translation Ethics introduces the topic of ethics for students, researchers, and professional translators. Based on a successful course and written by an experienced instructor, the Introduction and nine core chapters offer an accessible examination of a wide range of interlocking topic areas, which combine to form a cohesive whole, guiding students through the key debates.

Built upon a theoretical background founded in philosophy and moral theory, it outlines the main contributions in the area and traces the development of thought on ethics from absolutism to relativism, or, from staunchly-argued textual viewpoints to current lines of thought placing the translator as agent and an active ? even interventionary ? mediator. The textbook then examines the place of ethical enquiry in the context of professional translation, critiquing provision such as codes of ethics. Each chapter includes key discussion points, suggested topics for essays, presentations, or in-class debates, and an array of contextualised examples and case studies. Additional resources, including videos, weblinks, online activities, and PowerPoint slide presentations on the Routledge Translation studies portal provide valuable extra pedagogical support.

This wide-ranging and accessible textbook has been carefully designed to be key reading for a wide range of courses, including distance-learning courses, from translation and interpreting ethics to translation theory and practice.

An excellent and comprehensive introductory textbook on a much-debated topic: wide-ranging, clearly structured and reader-friendly. The illustrative case studies are aptly chosen, and the suggested activities and discussion points are pedagogically stimulating. Lambert is rather good at problematizing: readers are refreshingly encouraged to think! The book deserves to become a standard work.

-- Andrew Chesterman, University of Helsinki, Finland