世の中を見回してみると翻訳が溢れていることに気がつきます。異なる言語、文学、文化を理解することはもとより、外国のニュースや映画の字幕、取扱説明書に至るまで、もはや翻訳無くしては私たちの生活は成り立ちません。さまざまな言語から例を挙げ、商業分野における重要性を指摘するとともに、文学や芸術分野に翻訳が与える影響なども考察します。
   

• 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.