The Coming of Age of Technical Translation: an Introduction

It is heartening, therefore, to see the variety of directions from which technical translation has been studied reflected in the contributions to this special issue of JoSTrans. While some of the approaches seem to be quite distant and possibly even diametrically opposed in various ways, they all provide valuable views of different parts of the massive hull of technical translation which is frequently hidden below the waterline and they invariably uncover new areas of overlap, where different disciplines complement each other or build upon the work carried out elsewhere. Combined with research presented elsewhere in the field of LSP, for example, these contributions show that the field of technical translation has reached a new level of maturity in terms of how it is viewed, taught and researched. Klaus Schubert argues that technical translation as a professional, communicative activity cannot be fully described and modelled within the context of traditional Translation Studies. He describes the complex and