There Is Such a SCIENCE.A.V. Fedorov: Translation Theory Is a Special Discipline

Seventy years after the first publication of the Russian author Andrei V. Fedorov’s book Introduction to Translation Theory, specifically focused on translation studies, the present article makes an attempt to highlight once again Mr Fedorov’s contribution to laying the foundations for a universal translation theory and to observe, in retrospect, the peripeteia of its naming, the identification of its research field, its subject-matter and issues against the backdrop of various social, ideological and research contexts. Special emphasis is put on the functional concept of translation; the connection between linguistic stylistics and the theory of translation is retraced; an interpretation of different mid-twentieth-century scholars’ outlooks on the correlation between language and thinking, as well as the main categories of translation studies, is proposed.