Abstract
While approaches related to Descriptive Translation Studies are mainly designed to analyze translated work (the product), Anthony Pym’s approach to Translation archeology, humanization and the intercultural model tends to produce much more focus on translators (the producers) and the context in which those translators worked within or what Pym calls ‘intercultural space’, a concept used to denote to a cross-cultural/ multicultural social space. This paper is to reflect this intercultural model over Al-Andalus, the Arabic name for the Islamic Iberian Peninsula, where the Arabs settled for four centuries bringing with them their own social, political and cultural framework study and where the Arab Islamic culture had flourished. Based on this model, the research is to spot light on the ‘human translator’, address questions such as why such translations were produced in this particular place and time ‘the social causation’, the nature of the relationship of those translators to their patrons and clients their ‘social entourage’ (Pym1998) and to spot light on the social roles played by translators in mediating between cultures and the transmission of Arabic knowledge/science to Europe during the Medieval ages. I believe that putting focus on Pym’s archeology of translation would provide guidance for two types of translation historians: researchers who are interested in intercultural and interdisciplinary collaboration and those who study regional histories that have received little attention by scholars of translation, besides providing us with answers to what translation can tell us about a given historical context. On the other hand, the analysis of this period in specific would help bring this important era of translation history out from the shadows and give it the visibility that it deserves. arabic 19 English 60