Luhmann’s “Social Systems” Theory: Preliminary Fragments for a Theory of Translation

The present essay is an attempt to apply the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s “Social Systems” theory to translation. Luhmann’s book unfolds a theoretical view of human society as a closed system. In trying to apply it to translation as a practical communicative complexity, especially from the perspective of a functional model as e.g. the “skopos” theory, certain features discussed in Luhmann will prove to be helpful for a better understanding of the concept of translation, others must be reinterpreted for the present purpose. The “fragments” now published follow Luhmann’s considerations as closely as possible, but refrain from drawing detailed parallels to “translation” as a complex system.