The nature, place and role of a philosophy of translation in translation studies

The objective of the third UEA postgraduate symposium was ‘to explore the current relevance of theory to the practice of translation’ and to consider, among other things ‘which of the current theoretical pronouncements on translation are most relevant to translation practice in today’s society’. This applied angle is most welcome, and in this paper I take a step even further back, beyond translation theory, to the theory of meaning to see whether this discipline, in which translation has been a central issue since the middle of the 20th century, might be of some help to us in both our theorising and in our practice. I also want to explore the idea that our practice may have something to feed back to the theory of meaning about the nature of that very phenomenon. However, my overriding aim is to highlight what I see as the nature, place and role of a philosophy of translation in translation studies, because it is far from obvious from the state of the discipline as we tend to depict it today that a philosophy of translation exists, or what its place and roles might be, if it did exist.