Hatim, Basil and Munday, Jeremy (2019): Translation, Second edition. London/New York: Routledge, 376 p.

Following the first successful edition, Basil Hatim and Jeremy Munday have revised and updated Translation quite extensively for its second edition. It was published within the series Routledge Applied Linguistics, which offers readers comprehensive resource materials for their advanced study in some core fields of English language and Applied Linguistics. The series, including this book, is edited in a bottom-up and reader-friendly manner to allow researchers to explore the relevant fields according to their own stage of studying. It is elaborately designed and divided into three parallel and progressive sections, which are Section A: Introduction, Section B: Extension and Section C: Exploration. Each section consists of 14 units on a given topic so that the book can be read either in a linear way, which means it can be read from the beginning until the end, or in a thematic way, which means readers can choose only the topics that appeal to them. After introducing the topics in Section A, the authors carefully select some excerpts from the seminal works in Translation Studies in Section B. The thematic order may be of great use for researchers as Section C usually reviews the content in Sections A and B of the same unit and also develops the relevant topics for further research. This article will review the book according to the thematic order, briefly summarise the main ideas and analyse its advantages and aspects that warrant improvement. As its title “What is Translation?” implies, Unit 1 tries to discuss the fundamental conceptions of translation and Translation Studies through presenting Jakobson’s term “interlingual translation” and Holmes’s mapping of the field of Translation Studies respectively. It reveals that this field mainly deals with the varied phenomena of the process, product and function/context of translation, though it remains tentative as to whether there are any universals, or a general theory of translation for different kinds of translation texts or conditions. It finds that research into translation can be interdisciplinary, encompassing fields such as science, literature and politics, etc. Tracing the origin of the classical dichotomy in translation between the form and content of a text, which has led to some bi-polar “Translation Strategies” such as “literal” and “free,” “domestication” and “foreignisation,” Unit 2 argues that, at the least, translation strategies should not be regarded as extremes, but as a cline so that further research can be carried out on the elements, both within and outside the text, that influence the translation strategies and functions. Unit 3 touches upon an ambiguous area, or “The Unit of Translation,” the definition of which, in fact, has no full agreement due to the complexity of the translation process. It generally refers to the linguistic unit that the translator employs while translating. It can range from a word, clause or sentence to even higher levels such as text and intertextual levels. With the development of technical tools, empirical research in this area can be conducted from the perspective of the translator’s cognitive process. Following up the “Unit of Translation,” Unit 4 attempts to describe “Translation Shifts,” which is also a fuzzy concept to some extent. They are the small linguistic changes taking place between source and target texts. As has been mentioned above, since an evaluation of the unit of translation is required, the decision about whether a shift has taken place during translation will inevitably be subjective. Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1958/1995) categorisation of shifts between English and French remains a classical model. Although the analysis of translation shifts may ignore the bigger picture of discourse and the cultural context of translation, Hatim and Munday believe that it can …