Knowledge in Translation Studies and Translation Practice: Intellectual Capital in Modern Society

This paper seeks to show that translation practice and Translation Studies matter on both an organisational and a social level by demonstrating that the knowledge they generate forms an important part of the intellectual capital in the knowledge society and a key factor in value creation in organisations. It looks at methods available for managing knowledge and seeks to identify those instruments that can play a role in a translation setting. By virtue of their suitability to the forms of knowledge used in translation, we hypothesize that the appropriate use of such methods and instruments can facilitate the transformation of translation knowledge into intellectual capital, add value to products and services and thus make a valuable contribution to the sustainability of a knowledge society. The challenge now facing translation practice is to ensure that translators assume their role in knowledge management endeavours, implement appropriate methods for generating and sharing knowledge and so turn their knowledge into true intellectual capital.