Translation-spotting

Abstract Based on original archival research, this paper observes the sudden emergence of a large number of periodically published scientific and technical translation bibliographies in various Western countries. It proposes that these bibliographies should not (only) be regarded as a resource for research into the history of (scientific) translation, but that they themselves can be conceptualized as a new type of object of such research: translation bibliographies are a form of explicit translation knowledge that can and should be investigated with regard to the historical conditions of their production as well as their functions. This paper claims that these translation bibliographies form the core of a ‘translation knowledge infrastructure’ that was successively built up from 1945 onwards in the wake of the internationalization of the academic field in order to control the massive increase in translation production and to organize it rationally.