Perspectives on interpreting

Abstract

This article serves to introduce the papers in this special issue, devoted to interpreting studies. Over the past decades, interpreting has gained recognition as an academic field, typically as a branch of translation studies. The paper starts with a brief historical overview of this practice, with a focus on the early modern and the modern periods, and provides references to some of the research conducted in other fields as well. The next section offers a very brief survey of the modes and settings in which interpreting currently takes place, including simultaneous, consecutive and community interpreting. The article also serves to highlight the diversity of themes, languages, theoretical and methodological approaches, and geographical origin of the authors.