This article aims to present various meanings of “tenderness” in translation studies from historical, contemporary, and prospective perspectives, and to forecast future research trends. The authors explore both the poetics of artistic translation and the broad field of translation psychology, which has expanded since James S. Holmes to include psychoanalytic and cognitive findings. Translators’ tenderness is seen as a resultant of individual communicative and cognitive skills, perceptive readiness to the interlingual and intercultural experience, attention habits, and ethical principles.
