In recent years the term “literacy” has rapidly expanded its space in the lexicon. Only a short time ago it was an abstract and rarely used noun, usually referring to the state of communities or societies. It was not in the vocabulary of American schooling, along with reading, writing, language arts, or English. The related terms literate and illiterate, if applied to individuals, were limited to adults and to either highly refined or very rudimentary knowledge of written language. Now the word literacy has been extended on the American scene to express knowledge of other domains in such phrases as computer literacy and scientific literacy, and it is even being pluralized as literacies. It is also being used more and more, along with literate (but not illiterate), as an over-arching term for knowledge and activities that were until recently designated separately as reading and writing in discussions of theory, research, and practice. This use of the term reflects a more unified, holistic view of reading and writing as linguistic enterprises situated in social and intellectual contexts, a view that has been expanding with marked consequences.

Interlingual and intercultural communication in the form of oral and written translation is as old as mankind. Only in the past 40 years has it achieved recognition as a profession on an international scale: the Fédéeration Internationale dee Traduoteurs (FIT), which today embraces 49 national associations, was founded in 1953; the Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence (AIIC) came into being in the same year. Many countries began to offer both academic training and degrees to future professionals in the field; the Institute for Translator and Interpreter Training at the University of Vienna, for instance, celebrated its 40th anniversary a few years ago (cf., Festschrift 1983).

It is a privilege to be Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics in 2020 as it celebrates its 40th year. This is my fifth issue as Editor. I will begin this short introduction by paying tribute, with the help of Bill Grabe (Northern Arizona University), to the founding editor of the journal, Robert Kaplan (1929–2020). Without Robert Kaplan, none of us would be reading these pages. We will then turn to some comments from each of the previous editors on a few of the highlights of their time editing the journal, along with words for the future. After this, I will describe some recent updates, go through a few of the historical successes of the journal, and then turn to the contents of the exciting current issue, “Looking back and moving ahead.”