2019 Vol. 10 №1

Translation Studies has branched out into a heterogeneous interdiscipline during the past few decades. This development is not only the result of the emergence of different kinds of translation practices, research questions and new technologies, but also of different epistemo­logical and ontological assumptions about the object of study. Four major areas are outlined: linguistic, cultural, cognitive and sociological. Connections between them are briefly dis­cussed, but the main tendency has been one of fragmentation. Perhaps this does not matter?

This article concerns indirect translation (ITr), understood broadly as translation of translation, and has the aim of facilitating systematic research on this long-standing, widespread yet underexplored phenomenon. The article thus provides an overview of some of the main patterns in ITr practice and research and explores suggestions for related future studies. The overview follows the ‘Five W’s and One H’ approach. The what question concerns terminological and conceptual issues related to ITr and explores the relevance of systematic studies on ITr. The who question considers the profile of agents involved in ITr processesas well as the profile of ITr researchers. The where question relates to the spatial dimension of ITr as well as to the geographic spread of ITr research. The when question concerns the time coordinates of ITr practice as well as the diachronic evolution of ITr studies. The why questions looks into the motivations for ITr and into the historical neglect in the Translation Studies discipline. Finally, the how question considers selected details of ITr processes as well as the methods used in identifying most probable mediating texts and languages. The article ends with a brief consideration of prospects for research on ITr training. The what question concerns terminological and conceptual issues related to ITr and explores the relevance of systematic studies on ITr. The who question considers the profile of agents involved in ITr processes as well as the profile of ITr researchers. The where question relates to the spatial dimension of ITr as well as to the geographic spread of ITr research. The when question concerns the time coordinates of ITr practice as well as the diachronic evolution of ITr studies. The why questions looks into the motivations for ITr and into the historical neglect in the Translation Studies discipline. Finally, the how question considers selected details of ITr processes as well as the methods used in identifying most probable mediating texts and languages. The article ends with a brief consideration of prospects for research on ITr training.

The translation process can be regarded as a complex system involving many agents, organizational factors such as workflow, communication processes, project management, job security, and translator status. Environmental factors in the physical sense (e. g. lighting, temperature, air quality, space) as well in the broader sense of the role of translation and translators in the economy and society as a whole can also influence the process. Viewing translation from an ergonomic perspective can provide an appropriate framework to understand the impact of such factors on the demanding bilingual activity that translators engage in. Because their work requires close attention and concentration, translators have to exert energy and ultimately cognitive resources to compensate for the distraction of any physical discomfort, delays in computer responsiveness, or frustration with organizational problems. In this article, the relevance of ergonomics and the implications of putting the translator and their translation processes in focus are discussed in light of recent research.

Reception of translated texts has thus far received relatively scant, uneven attention in Translation Studies, even though reception studies theories have been applied in the last decades, first to literary translation and then touching upon other areas and text types. This chapter reports on audiovisual translation in particular, exploring the very concepts of audience and reception. Adjacent concepts are also discussed, all having a bearing on the approach and the methodology, and all chosen for the investigation of reception. Last but not least, the article discusses the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinarity which has brought, is bringing, and may continue to bring advances to the study of the reception of audiovisual texts in translation.

News translation has been investigated more systematically since the mid-2000s. Since then, it has kept pushing the boundaries of translation studies by asking such questions as the following: Can we study multilingual practices that do not necessarily have an identified source text? If so, what do we analyze and compare? Can we call these practices ‘translation’? How do we integrate multimodality into our traditionally textual analyses? This article formulates tentative answers based onrecent publications in the field. It calls for sustained research in the reception of news translation and with cognitive methods, as well as intensified exchanges with audiovisual translation.

Corpus-based interpreting studies (CIS) are a relatively recent “[…] Off-shoot of Corpus-based Translation Studies” to quote the seminal paper (1998) by the late Miriam Shlesinger, a constant source of inspiration for the T&I community. This line of research is now gaining ground in both conference interpreting and community interpreting. The present paper focuses on conference interpreting and covers the evolution of the concept of interpreting corpus by providing an overview of the most representative examples, from the early collections of transcribed source and target speeches to full-fledged machine-readable corpora based on corpus linguistic standards and tools. Furthermore, methodological issues and original results from a variety of recent CIS are presented.