Which were the happiest translators? the case for methodological pluralism in translation history

In this theoretical paper I engage critically several key issues in translation history theory raised by translation historians in recent years. These methodological and philosophical debates address crucial aspects of the discipline such as epistemic priorities in historical inquiry, the place of translation theories in historical narratives and the related issue of target audiences and constitute valuable contributions to current thinking on central aspects of translation history. I submit here, however, that several aspects of these methodological proposals pose a number of underlying problems, which I classify hierarchically as first-order and second-order difficulties, depending on their perceived epistemic relevance. The primary objection connects partly with what philosopher Paul Roth labels “methodological exclusivism” (Roth, 1987), understood in this essay as the notion that there exists one suitable method for translation history. Building on Roth, I argue for the contrary epistemic position, namely, “methodological pluralism” understood in its most basic meaning as the negation of exclusivism. I posit that methodological exclusivism is unjustifiable and that not only does it have the potential to severely limit freedom of inquiry in the discipline and the historian’s choice in the pursuit of knowledge, but it may also produce truncated structures of explanation (McCullagh, 1998).