Hurtado Albir, Amparo (ed.) (2017). Researching Translation and Interpreting Competence by PACTE Group. [Benjamins Translation Library, 127]. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 401 pp.

The notion of "translation competence" (TC), the underlying knowledge system needed to translate (PACTE 2005), has been for over three decades a core issue in Translation Studies (TS). Institutions of higher learning, where TS researchers are based, have always been interested in the type of knowledge and skills shared by professional translators that bilingual or novice trainees do not possess. Thus, it is often conceptualized as the main component of translation education (Deslisle 1980). Over the years, a number of scholars and research groups have proposed more or less detailed theoretical models of translation competence from both cognitive and didactic perspectives (Deslisle 1980; Bell 1991; Pym 2003; Hönig 1995; Kiraly 1995, 2012; Shreve 1997; Neubert 2000; Kelly 2005). Nevertheless, as the introduction to this volume indicates, when the PACTE group of the Autonomous University of Barcelona started their research on this topic "there was no generally accepted TC model that has been validated empirically" (PACTE 2017: xxvi). To date, only two research groups have engaged in empirical research in order to validate the proposed models: the large-scale efforts of the collective behind this volume, the PACTE group led by Amparo Hurtado, and the smaller-scale publications of the TRANSCOM group led by Susanne Göpferich (Göpferich 2009; Göpferich et al. 2011). The book Researching Translation and Interpreting Competence by PACTE Group is a compendium of the research efforts of the PACTE group since 1999 (Hurtado Albir 1999), and represents, without any doubt, the most comprehensive, up to date and large-scale effort to systematically, empirically and solidly offer a global and holistic approach to the study of the notion of translation competence. The objectives of the volume are to "present the results of our research on Translation Competence (TC)" in terms of the identification of "the characteristics specific to TC", and of how to "develop and test the instruments [...] capable of measuring the specific characteristics of TC", as well as to "show that TC [is] qualitatively different from bilingual competence" (PACTE 2017: xxv). These objectives, after the reader reaches the end of the book and has been taken through a detailed exposition of the entire research cycle of this group over 17 years, are quite successfully achieved. The project is grounded on Cognitive Translation Studies approach, and it conceptualizes translation competence as expert knowledge that is not possessed by all bilinguals; it is mostly procedural or operative knowledge (knowing how to do things) as opposed to declarative knowledge (knowledge about something).