In this book, Douglas Robinson introduces a new distinction between 'constative' and 'performative' linguistics, arguing that Austin's distinction can be used to understand linguistic methodologies. Constative linguistics, Robinson suggests, includes methodologies aimed at 'freezing' language as an abstract sign system, while performative linguistics explores how language is used or 'performed' in those speech situations. Robinson then tests his hypothesis on the act of translation.
Drawing on a range of language scholars and theorists, Performative Linguistics consolidates the many disparate action-approaches to language into a new paradigm for the study of language.

Douglas Robinson offers the most comprehensive collection of translation theory readings available to date, from the Histories of Herodotus in the mid-fifth century before our era to the end of the nineteenth century. The result is a startling panoply of thinking about translation across the centuries, covering such topics as the best type of translator, problems of translating sacred texts, translation and language teaching, translation as rhetoric, translation and empire, and translation and gender.

This pioneering anthology contains 124 texts by 90 authors, 9 of them women. Sixteen texts by 4 authors appear here for the first time in English translation; 17 texts by 9 authors appear in completely new translations. Every entry is provided with a bibliographical headnote and footnotes.

Intended for classroom use in History of Translation Theory, History of Rhetoric or History of Western Thought courses, this anthology will also prove useful to scholars of translation and those interested in the intellectual history of the West.

Translators have long claimed that their job is to “step aside and let the source author speak through them.” In Who Translates? Douglas Robinson uses this adage to set up a series of “postrationalist” perspectives on translation, all based on the recognition that translation has always been thought of in terms of the translator’s surrender to forces beyond his or her rational control. Exploring this theme, Robinson examines Plato’s Ion, Philo Judaeus and Augustine on the Septuagint, Paul on inspired interpreters, Joseph Smith on the Book of Mormon, and Schleiermacher, Marx, and Heidegger on translation. He traces the imaginative and historical linkages between twentieth-century conceptions of ideology and ancient conceptions of spirit-channeling, and the performative inversion of power relations by which the “channel” (or translator) comes to wield the source author as his or her tool. And he argues throughout for a postrationalist conception of translation based not on the translator’s rational control of words and meanings but rather on a flowing through the translator of voices and textualities.

Arising from cultural anthropology in the late 1980s and early 1990s, postcolonial translation theory is based on the observation that translation has often served as an important channel of empire. Douglas Robinson begins with a general presentation of postcolonial theory, examines current theories of the power differentials that control what gets translated and how, and traces the historical development of postcolonial thought about translation. He also explores the negative and positive impact of translation in the postcolonial context, reviewing various critiques of postcolonial translation theory and providing a glossary of key words. The result is a clear and useful guide to some of the most complex and critical issues in contemporary translation studies.