Our research focuses on a variety of subjects and disciplines within the field of translation studies that range from viewing it as a literary and cultural phenomenon, to the methodologies involved in its teaching. Although we are particularly interested in literary translation and its history, we understand that translation deals with an enormous diversity of complex phenomena. More than a mere exchange between different world-views articulated in different linguistic systems, the processes involved in translation also attempt to construct all sorts of identities—national, religious, political, or gender, among others). Irrespective of its particular nature, identity is usually built upon cultural capital amassed through translation processes of very diverse kinds. Consequently, translation constitutes a fundamental strategy when it comes to the establishment of literary canons, but it proves to be central in the transmission of knowledge within the history of ideas, and the history of science too. Translation understood in a wider sense can also take place between different sign-systems (such as between literature and the visual arts, for instance). There is also intra-linguistic translation between different literary genres, different linguistic registers, disciplines, etc., within the same linguistic community—this includes the much underexplored field of the transmission of knowledge between scientific discourse and the language employed in those disciplines that belong to the fields of the arts and the humanities.

The group has existed for several years and recently we have embarked upon an ambitious and emphatic internationalisation of our activities and projects, incorporating researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Saint Andrews in the United Kingdom, the University of Chicago and the University of Washington in Seattle in the USA. We are also undertaking joint projects with the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), New York University, the University of Warsaw and the Linguistic University of Moscow.