: During the past quarter-century scholars have devoted a great deal of thinking, if not research, to the translation process as such. For the most part, these have been scholars of another ilk, primary linguists, aided now and then by mathematicians and psychologists. In spite of the fact that the results of their thinking proved to be simplistic when applied to highly complex entities, we should not forget the contribution of such scientists as Trubetskoy, Havranek, Mukarovsky, Levý, Proházka, Sapir, Whorf, Loundsbury, Voegelin, Harry Hoijer, Greenberg and Weinreich to the development of Translation Studies.