ABSTRACT
Since the publication of James Holmes’s seminal paper, ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’ (1972/1988), in which the standardised use of ‘translation studies’ (TS) as a discipline has been called for (Baker 2009), the emancipation of translation studies has opened up research avenues enjoyed by the translation studies community. The latitude of research freedom in translation studies can be evidenced in the various conceptual ‘turns’ or ‘approaches’ taken by translation researchers in exploring the phenomenon of translation as a cross-cultural and cross-lingual communication. By choosing the sociological turn that arose in translation studies during the late 1990s and by using the Harry Potter series as a case study, with an emphasis on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), this chapter draws on Bourdieu’s theory of practice (Bourdieu 1977) and, in particular, on its concepts of capital and field, as well as from Latour’s actor-network theory (1997). The present author explores translation as a relationally interactive and socially regulated activity concerning the involvement or influence of the translation actors, both the people and the artefacts, to varying degrees (Buzelin 2005, 2006, 2007a; Jones 2009; Kung 2010). This chapter aims at underscoring the necessity of understanding translation production as a socially driven process, which is conditioned by the interplay of the various mediated agencies within a given translation field and social network (Wolf 2002). The research methodology will be qualitative. The data will be collected from the comparative analysis of the source text and target text, as well as from the extra-/para-textual survey of the situation surrounding the translation production of the Harry Potter series.190
