Translating is sociolinguistic activity. We can define sociolinguistics as the study of language in relation to society, and this is how we shall be taking the term in this book. Sociolinguistics has become a recognized  part of most courses at university level on 'linguistics' or 'language', and is indeed one of the main growth points in the study of language, from the point of view of both teaching and research. There are now major English-language journals devoted to research publications) and a number of introductory textbooks, apart from the present one.