These essays challenge the notion that translations are derivative products of no significant function in literary and cultural history. They draw attention to ways in which modern theoretical and historical work in Translation Studies and scholarship in Ottoman literature and culture can share a forum for questioning and problematizing established perceptions and research paradigms.

In the different historical and cultural contexts studied in these essays, translation (in English) connects with such concepts as logopoeia, imitatio, nazire, terceme and modern Turkish çeviri. It is also examined as concealed literary phenomenon, cultural import, a social system, a means of planning and as object of historical descriptive research.