College of Languages and Translation
The article "A Socio-Historical Mapping of Translation Fields: A Case Study of English Self-Help Literature in Arabic Translation" applies Pierre Bourdieu's social field theory to translation studies, focusing on the Arabic translations of English self-help literature in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from 1982 to 2016. The authors constructed a bibliographical database comprising 993 translated self-help titles to map the field's historical trajectory and production dynamics. This integration of socio-historical analysis with empirical data reveals the interactions between translation agents and the socio-historical forces shaping translation production.
The study demonstrates how field theory can enrich the analysis of translation as a social practice, offering a methodological framework that can serve as a heuristic model for analyzing translation fields across different language pairs, temporal periods, and geographic contexts. This approach contributes to future research in translation sociology and the development of translation bibliographies.