Interdisciplinarity in Language, Linguistics and Translation

The relevance of Linguistics in the field of Translation is obvious. It is also a truism that translation cannot be without language and that one cannot translate without knowing about the source language and the target language. In the world today, translation studies have been enjoying unprecedented success because it has become a fertile and frequent metaphor for the contemporary intercultural world. As a result, scholars all over disciplines have been working on translational phenomenon and particularly how it affects their various disciplines. It is also relevant to understand that to ‘know’ a language is not the same as to ‘know about’ a language. This means that being able to speak a language fluently is no guarantee that one is able to explain and present that language to others in another language. The knowledge of Linguistics is therefore a sure way of improving the quality of translation. Language, Linguistics and Translation have a somewhat asymmetrical relationship. In fact, every linguist needs translation as an autonomous, independent discipline especially when translation studies embraces a broader, transdisciplinary perspective that sees translation as an instantiation of more general cognitive and cultural processes of the creation, communication and transformation of meaning within and across cultures. This paper attempts to discuss the relationship between the three different but interrelated disciplines, translation, linguistics and language.