Review of África Vidal Claramonte (2022): Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters

Transdisciplinary Encounters by María Carmen África Vidal Claramonte expands the definition of translation in line with Bassnett and Johnston's (2019) notion of the "outward turn" and applies this perspective to contemporary art to broaden the scope of how we understand and view translation in today's image-centric world.The author encourages us to reflect on how we define translation, and to rethink the multifaceted nature of the multiple discourses that surround us, which reshape our perceptions in both implicit and explicit ways.In addition to emphasizing the urgency of broadening the scope of translationand hence, translation studies (TS)the author also reveals that the emergence of new forms of communication can be attributed to the cosmopolitan, image-centric and digital nature of our contemporary world.These factors have facilitated the formation of multilingual and multimodal spaces, which requires the establishment of a comprehensive global visual culture through the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach, wherein TS can prove advantageous.In this particular context, the primary objective of this monograph is to examine the correlation between translation and contemporary art, as well as to demonstrate the ways in which art might effectively utilize translation.This monograph posits that the paradigm shift within TS compels a departure from conventional definitions of translation, which traditionally rely on the notion that translation arises solely from interlingual transfer.The author argues that in the twenty-first century there is a clear and significant need for exploring the intersections between various means of constructing and translating texts.These intersections extend into areas such as contemporary art, multimodality, soundscapes, and digital spaces.Hence, from the author's perspective, translation is a complex and multifaceted concept that entails reflection, interaction, dynamism, demolishing boundaries, visiting and creating new spaces, and sometimes conflict: all in all, this new definition embraces "indefinition" (Vidal Claramonte 2022, 14).The natural next step of this argument is to contend that such an expansion of the translation concept could benefit from interdisciplinarity: because