• Offers an authoritative account of the field of translation, covering the whole history of translation
• Provides a range of fascinating examples from many languages
• Puts forward fresh arguments about why translation matters and how it is changing in the digital age

 
Translation is everywhere, and matters to everybody. Translation doesn't only give us foreign news, dubbed films and instructions for using the microwave: without it, there would be no world religions, and our literatures, our cultures, and our languages would be unrecognizable. 

In this Very Short Introduction, Matthew Reynolds gives an authoritative and thought-provoking account of the field, from ancient Akkadian to World English, from St Jerome to Google Translate. He shows how translation determines meaning, how it matters in commerce, empire, conflict and resistance, and why it is fundamental to literature and the arts.