Leipzig School (translation)

The Leipzig School of Translation Studies (German: Leipziger Übersetzungswissenschaftliche Schule), or simply Leipzig School, is the denomination of a group of translation and interpreting scholars centered in the Leipzig University.

Notable during the years of the Cold War, it had a close relationship with the Moscow School (Barkhudarov, Komissarov, Shveitser, Kolshanskiy, etc.). It influenced the international debate on translation studies; one of its main developments was communicative equivalence, based on linguistics, semiotics and communication theory.

Among its most prominent members are Otto Kade, Gert Jäger and Albrecht Neubert.[1] In 1965, with his doctoral dissertation Subjektive und objektive Faktoren im Übersetzungsprozeß (Subjective and objective factors in the translation process) Kade sought to go beyond the limits of a purely linguistic approach to interpretation and translation; his dissertation is considered one of the most significant achievements of translation theory in Germany, and also the first milestone of the Leipzig School.