Texts have been translated between languages empirically, by hand. This doesn’t mean that people have not spent time reflecting and theorizing on the art of translation or that the great translators of history have stopped proposing their own theories.
However, only recently have linguists elevated translation to a scientific category by creating a branch of applied linguistics.
Thus, Translation Studies was born and it is designed to train professionals through the application of accumulated experiences and the reflection of the researcher. The theories on translation, which were first formed by structuralists and generationists, have recently been supported through the contributions from psycholinguistic aspects.
Translation Studies is the science that studies translation, i.e. the practice and process of translating. It is a discipline centered on metatranslation. In this sense, it differs from translation as an activity (translation), translation as a product (translated text, often incorrectly referred to as translation), and translation theory (due to its explanatory character, and not just descriptive or comparative).
This is the extent at the moments, since several universities around the world offer it as a course of studies, which can then be applied to different aspects of translation: certified translations, research groups, application in different languages, etc.
