The “latest” translation research

While researchers are encouraged and supposed to draw on the latest research literature and findings in their respective field, it is nevertheless difficult to determine what this guiding principle of the latest actually means, either in theory or in practice. This article investigates this question of how far back we need to extend a survey, and concentrates on what could be implied by the “temporally latest”, when the focus is on the age of the sources which are used intranslation research. The theoretical implications of “the latest” are first presented followed by an analysis of a restricted sample of References sections in translation-theoretical textbooks and monographs, as well as articles in edited works and journals primarily from the 2000s.