From Translation to Organization to International Business: an Academic No Man’s Land

Abstract

Universities claim to represent a crucial component in the contemporary world of knowledge, which involves a given degree of self-criticism and the redefinition of a few priorities. The recognition of new departments, such as Translation Studies (TS) is obviously part of this historical movement of self-criticism, and TS itself reflects similar processes in its own history, or rather prehistory. Although TS claims to have integrated Globalization and the new international world into its academic program, exactly how it will combine its initial self-definitions (built around translator training) with academic definitions (What is translation? How can past and present translation phenomena be accounted for? How do language policies, multilingualism, media discourse or communities, not to mention ranking, fit into all this?) is its challenge for the coming years. Without excluding topics from the initial moments of the new discipline (such as training or nation-state interaction), we propose to explore and exploit what can be learned from organization by making use of the contemporary business world (in this case the international car industry), which is a No Man’s Land within the coalescing traditions of the new discipline. And in this little-known world,  fundamental new insights are waiting to be gathered.