The ability for translators and interpreters, both active and trainees, to access fundamental scientific works is an essential factor for improving translating and interpreting effectiveness.

Among these is the current monograph by German academics Katharina Reiss and Hans J. Vermeer, "Foundations of a General Theory of Translation"; indeed, one could say that this book holds a prominent position among the major studies in translation theory due to its particularly innovative and disruptive nature, as it introduced, in the early 1980s, the functional approach to translation studies, a new scientific model, significantly contributing to the establishment of translation studies as a new scientific discipline.

In the first part of the book, Vermeer develops the theoretical framework and the basic principles of the Skopos theory as a general theory of translating and interpreting action. In the second part, Reiss introduces her text typology theory, creating a coherent whole with the first part. The advantages of this collaboration are many.

This collaboration frees us from the barren perception of translation as an act of trans/re-coding at two speeds in the quest for "equivalence," as well as from the eternal binary opposition between "faithful/literal" and "free/meaning-based" translation; it assigns the appropriate significance to the cultural dimension of language, texts, and textual functions; finally, by focusing on the translating action, for the first time, it elevates the translator and interpreter as specialists in intercultural communication.

The current Greek translation of this important book is aimed not only at the directly interested audience of (trainee) translators and interpreters, translation scholars, and other researchers but also at all those readers who are fascinated by the complex and "magical" world of translation and interpretation.