HISTORY, THEORY, DIDACTICS: MICHEL BALLARD’S TRANSLATION STUDIES This article intends to show to what extent Michel Ballard’s contribution to the Translation Studies literature is essential and has made him one of the most important figures in the field. Indeed, he not only contributed to have translation science taught at the University along with translation courses but also developed it as a proper field of research, independent from – though related to – linguistics. Ballard nearly left no stone unturned and interested at the same time in theoretical, historical and teaching aspects of translation. His views, always based on the observation of corpora, include aspects often widely neglected by translation theorists such as the translator’s creativity and resulted in a renewed conception of translation units including subjectivity. Ballard wrote 120 articles and 25 books, a lot of them being well-known references for whoever has an interest in translation.