The Retranslation of non-Literary Texts: a Review Study

This article aims at reviewing three major studies in the Translation Studies on the retranslation of non-literary texts, an unexplored field of research. These major contributions were conducted by Susam-Sarajeva (2003), Flotow (2009) and Song (2012). It is argued in this study that the field of Translation Studies can benefit much from the perspective suggested by these researchers. The retranslations of non-literary texts are better seen when located within the socio-cultural and historical conditions that have shaped their re-production in the translating language and culture. In other words, the retranslation of such texts is better explained by specific contexts and conditions in the target language than by the source texts or the poor quality of ‘first translations’.