Lecture 1

CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATION STUDIES

1. Translation Studies as an Academic Discipline.

2. Cognitive Translation Studies (TS).
3. Sociological TS.
4. Technological TS
5. Economic TS
6. Anthropological TS

Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of

the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization. As an
interdiscipline, Translation Studies borrows much from the various fields of study that
support translation. These include comparative literature, computer science, history,
linguistics, philology, philosophy, semiotics, and terminology.

1. Translation Studies as an Academic Discipline

Translation Studies entails the systematic examination of translation both as an applied

practice and also as a means of understanding the movement and transfer between diverse
languages and cultures. Translation Studies deals with the practical experiences of the
translator; it also explores from theoretical and methodological perspectives the history
and philosophy of translation, as well as current trends in the field. Translation Studies
may examine the practices and context of translating texts that are specialist (legal,
business, medical, etc.); it also may explore the art of translation as a creative act in
literary translation and international marketing. Translation Studies may also explore how
issues of culture, power, gender, ethics medium affect the act of translating. The study of
these enables students to apply their theoretical understanding to the approaches,
techniques, and choices that are used daily as a practicing translator.

The term translation studies was coined by the Amsterdam-based American scholar
James S. Holmes in his paper "The name and nature of translation studies", [1] which is
considered a foundational statement for the discipline. [2] In English, writers occasionally
use the term translatology (and less commonly traductology) to refer to translation
studies, and the corresponding French term for the discipline is usually traductologie (as
in the Société Française de Traductologie). In the United States there is a preference for
the term Translation and Interpreting Studies (as in the American Translation and
Interpreting Studies Association), although European tradition includes interpreting
within translation studies (as in the European Society for Translation Studies).

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The purpose of translation is to convey the original tone and intent of a message, taking
into account cultural and regional differences between source and target languages.
Translation has been used by humans for centuries, beginning after the appearance of
written literature.

The Role of Translation Studies

Courses in Translation Studies are a great way for linguists, language graduates, and
translators to develop a deep understanding of the academic field, and the skills to
practice as a translation professional. Translation enables effective communication
between people around the world.

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/translation/blog/2018/04/17/what-is-translation-studies/

Translation Studies (hereafter abbreviated as TS) is now a fairly well established

academic discipline related to the study of the translation theory and practice. Since its
formal beginnings in the 1970’s, it has witnessed an unprecedented growth and “has
moved from the study of words to text to sociocultural context to the working
practices of the translators themselves” (Munday 2016: 27).

A notable characteristic of recent TS research has been its interdisciplinarity as it has

had links to linguistics (especially semantics; pragmatics; applied, contrastive and
cognitive linguistics), modern language studies, comparative literature, cultural studies
(including gender and postcolonial studies), philosophy (of language and meaning,
hermeneutics, deconstruction and ethics) and in recent years also to creative writing and
sociology.

Borrowing a myriad of theoretical and methodological lenses from other disciplines in

the humanities and social sciences, the interdisciplinarity of TS is more evident now than
ever before. Tracing its vibrant history, TS has come a long way from being a mere sub-
discipline of contrastive linguistics, comparative literature or part of language-learning
methodology via a discipline up to a multidiscipline.

As a consequence of interdisciplinary contact with other disciplines, which may call into
question the dominant theoretical concept, the so-called turns or ‘shifting viewpoints’
(see Snell-Hornby 2006) have emerged.

The turns have reified the discussions of paradigms that have shaped TS. In its history,
TS has witnessed a variety of such turns, from the ‘pragmatic turn’ in the 1960’s
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linguistics – when many still viewed TS as a sub-field of contrastive linguistics – and the
‘cultural turn’ in the 1990’s, to the ‘sociological turn’, ‘power turn’ or ‘cognitive
turn’ over the past two decades.

More recently, the 2010’s saw the rise of the ‘technological’, ‘activist’ and ‘economic
turns’, as proposed by Cronin (2010), Wolf (2014) and Gambier (2014), respectively.

Of course, nowadays, the given viewpoints can rarely be sharply demarcated from one
another as a growing body of present-day TS research cannot be performed only within
one approach.

The turns in TS also imply approaches to translation and they are not discrete,
hermetically sealed. In the same way as linguistic-translational analysis which does not
consider the broader contextual factors is in some way deficient, so too are culturally
oriented studies which abstain from a textual analysis.

TS in the second half of the 2010’s, with all its manifold sub-branches and avenues of
research, has taken on such incredible dimensions that it is possible to start to regard the
discipline as a meta-hybrid.

Klaudia Bednarova-Gibova uses the concept of ‘meta-hybrid’. Delabastista (qtd. in

Brems, Meylaerts and van Doorslaer 2014:2) refers to this phenomenon as a deeply
ironic paradox: The more TS is coming to its own, the more its central object –
translation – gets eroded and dispersed. The harder we look at translation, the softer our
analytical focus appears to be getting and the more the specificity of our object seems to
be dissolving.

Shedding light on various strands of contemporary TS research, the paper aims to

reconceptualize present-day TS focusing on the latest avenues of research which will
continue to dominate TS discussions in the next decade or so.

2. Cognitive TS
Cognitive TS covers the area of cognition-related aspects of the translation process using
experimental methods and technological tools to ultimately gain a better insight into the
so-called ‘black box’ (what is going on in translator’s mind), the “classic known
unknown in TS” (see Brems, Meylaerts and van Doorslaer 2014:7).

Cognitive TS corresponds to Translation Process Research (TPR) and intersects with a

number of disciplines such cognitive science, psychology, bilingualism studies,
ergonomics, artificial intelligence and anthropology.
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Employing also the methods of ethnographic and corpus research, cognitive TS strives to
illuminate our understanding of the mental processes which underlie the complex
observable behaviour of cross-language communication.

E.g. Package smile

As early as 2004 Wills saw TPR as one of the principal future directions in TS, in
particular research on the objectifying of the translation process (ibid.).

Saldanha and O’Brien (2014:109) highlight the fact that process-oriented research
follows primarily twofold aims;
- firstly, to understand cognitive processes which influence the competence of translator
and
-secondly, the relations between cognition and the translated product.

cognitive processes might be well understood via metacultural competence

Current topics of interest, which merit further research, comprise the extension of general
cognitive paradigms (e.g. connectionism, computationalism, embedded, embodied,
enacted, extended, distributed and affected cognition) into cognitive TS.

Other strands of research in this ambit of TS are represented by cognitive research

methods (such as key stroke logging, eye tracking and neuroimaging), explorations of
how the environment influences communication participant’s behaviour, cognitive
processing when performing communicative tasks (humancomputer interaction and
ergonomics) and the learning and development of translation skills (what translation
competence is comprised of and what marks out the successful translator’s decisions).

In line with recent studies from cognitive psychology, cognitive effort is investigated
based on eye-tracking metrics and subjective ratings.

More recently, Christensen (2011:137) calls for the need of empirical studies with a
special focus on how translation-memory (TM) tools impact translators’ mental
processes and workflow as “the mental changes imposed by the TM technology have not
been object of much research”.

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Besides, the next brand-new trend in cognitive TS seems neuroscientific research,
especially an interest in the person of the translator as a “mentally involved participant”
(Brems, Meylaerts and van Doorslaer 2014:7).

Another hot topic in TS centres on cognition in post-editing which involves editing,

modifying and/or correcting a target-language text that was automatically translated by a
machine translation system. Indeed, such a focus of research represents an
interdisciplinary overlap between cognitive and technological TS (see below).

The research on the potential impact that translation memories may have on cognitive
effort, cognitive segmentation and translator performance shows how the translator task
has been changed with the advent of the electronic resources (Mellinger 2016:11).

3. Sociological TS

The first sparks of interest in sociological aspects of TS can be traced back to

Holmes’1972 seminal study The Name and Nature of Translation where he touches on
them in a section devoted to research into function-oriented descriptive TS.

He claims that research focused on describing the functioning of translations in a receiver

socio-cultural situation could lead to an interdisciplinary research field, later known as
sociological TS (Angelovičová 2016:16).

Later on, Chesterman (2007) distinguishes three sub-fields of the sociology of

translation: sociology of translations, sociology of translators and sociology of
translating. Whereas the sociology of translations deals with meta-texts and their
functioning in a receiving culture, the sociology of translators examines their position in
society, their working conditions, copyrights and schedule of charges.

In the centre of attention of the sociology of translating are stages of the translation
process in a wider sense, i.e. quality check and editing, team translation, relationships
with clients and other translation process participants.

Moreover, Zabalbeascoa (2000) makes a distinction between translation processes in a

wider and a narrower sense whereas the former is oriented towards an analysis of
sociocultural phenomena and the latter towards linguistic and stylistic issues.

Hence, Zabalbeascoa’s understanding of the translation process in a wider sense shows a

certain parallel to Chesterman’s approach (2007).
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Finally, in 2009, in a thematic issue of Hermes a plea was formulated in favour of
establishing of what was labelled ‘Translator Studies’, focusing on the figure of the
translator rather than on translations as texts (Wolf 2014: 7)

Admittedly, the last two decades of TS research have been marked by a ‘sociological
turn’ as an ever increasing attention has been paid to the agency of translators as well as
to the social factors which permeate acts of translation. The turn is evident in research
employing microperspectives to delve into issues connected to resistance and activism
(see Tymoczko 2010) and macro-perspectives to cast light on the role played by society
or institutions in an intercultural communication (see Sella-Sheffy and Shlesinger 2011).

Moreover, agency and social factors are being discussed in interdisciplinary terms more
than ever. Nowadays, according to Angelelli (2014:1) the chief focus is on the
exploration of the inter-social and intra-social agency and identity construction, on their
activities and consequences thereof, but also on other phenomena such as the
displacement of texts and people and issues of access and linguicism. Perhaps most
importantly, within participant-oriented research, translators as social agents have been
brought into sharp focus.

According to Wolf (2014:11) the conceptualization of new approaches has brought a shift
of focus to new research fields within the sociology of translation such as institutions of
translator’s training, professional institutions and their impact on translation practices,
questions of ethics in translation and political aspect of translation.

The relations of power, which have been brought to the forefront already by culturally
oriented approaches, may now be linked to the translator’s (and the translation’s)
situatedness in society. Moreover, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus4 seems of paramount
importance for understanding of the translation process since it helps trace the interaction
between (translation) text analysis and social analysis (Wolf 2014:13).

More recently, translation started to be interpreted as a politicallyoriented activity

because translation can be involved in the field of mediating conflicts and translators can
be abused in military accusations and for the (post-) colonialist machinations’ sake.

A politically-shaped habitus of the translator brings us then to an interplay between

translation and activism: “if we talk about the activist agenda of translation, this means
emphasizing specific situations where the translator’s intervention is shaped by specific
patterns of beliefs or convictions which follow a certain political programme mostly
connected with solidarity and social claim” (ibid:18). This ultimately triggers what may
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be called ‘an activist turn’ in TS, creating room for transdisciplinary overlaps between
sociology, politics and translation.

Habitus refers to the “broad societal, identitary and cognitive make-up or ‘disposition’ of
the individual, which is heavily influenced by family and education; habitus is
particularly linked to field and to cultural capital and has been central to recent
sociological work in TS” (Munday 2016:237). A deeper interpretation of the term in
point discloses that it is a joint system of rules and values that a certain community
abides by without knowing about them and based on their experiences they accept or
refuse otherness and interpret reality.

4. Technological TS
Cronin (2010) mentions a relatively recent turn in TS which has been described as
‘technological’. While the previous turns in TS were mainly determined by developments
in adjacent disciplines such linguistics, cultural theory and history, the latter is the
outcome of significant shifts in which translation is carried out in the contemporary world
(Cronin 2010:1). Similarly, Gambier (2014:1) concurs that translating and translation are
being transformed with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and a “new
work environment is shaking up the translator’s world” (ibid.). With all these changes in
our digital age going on, Folaron (2012:27) wisely predicts that “how languages and
cultures intervene and intersect through technologies, translation and localization at
different levels of the computer, ICT, Internet and Web World, in all its complex
dimensions […]”, will be a source of reflection for many years to come. Of all
contemporary strands of TS, technological TS appears to be undergoing the most radical
changes and on the strength of its heterogeneity offers a wealth of new research avenues.
Over the past decade or two, three new scenarios have emerged for technological TS in
total, i.e. audiovisual translation; localization and globalization; and corpus-based
approaches. Of these, the corpus-based approach enables a thorough analysis and
discovery of many traits of translated language and is driving the development of
automatic machine translation. Currently, localization and globalization seems the most
evident locus of contact between technology, the postmodern world and translator
identity (Munday 2016:300). ‘Audiovisual translation’, ‘screen translation’, ‘multimedia
translation’ or ‘vulnerable translation’ 6 , whatever its name, has of late been marked by
vivid tendencies to integrate it into broader analytical models, transcending the realm of a
purely prescriptive and practice-based phenomenon. Recently, attention has moved from
the study of interlingual subtitling (as present in various forms for the cinema and DVD),
dubbing, surtitling (where the subtitles are projected above the stage at the opera or
theatre) to intralingual subtitling for disabled groups of recipients (such as the hard of
hearing) and to new forms of translations such as amateur translation7 or video game
translation which will now be subjected to a greater scrutiny. The reasons for the
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proliferation of amateur translation in the 2010’s may be connected to the spread of the
English language into all areas of the sociolinguistic reality, which has been brought
about according to Krajňáková (2016:39) by two things: the loss of the hard-and-fast rule
to translate into one’s native language8 and growing confidence of ubiquitous translators.
In addition, the preference of the present-day translation market for translations which are
submitted “as quickly and cheaply as possible” also paves the way for greater tolerance
for imperfect amateur translation. Despite the current efforts of accepting amateur
translation in TS (see FernandézCostales 2012:20-21), there are still very vocal others
who stress its negative impact on translation quality and overall deprofessionalization of
the profession of translator. According to Gambier (2014:4-5), popular strands of amateur
translation include fansubbing (scan-trans) and collective or participatory translation
(crowd-sourcing). Fansubbing refers to the practice of amateur subtitling by fans and for
fans online, which was originally used for the translation of mainly Japanese manga and
animé cartoons. Collective translation is used in the localization of the software, web
sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikipedia etc.) or for translating articles and reports, or even
in e.g. the Harry Potter series which appeared in unauthorized written translation in
several languages, where a collective team of fans translated the fifth instalment in less
than two days. However, such modern translation practices have both their plus side as
well as a down side. Their assets are up-holding translating as a pastime as a distributed
problem-solving among the community and providing translational help for others. On
the other hand, amateur translation raises serious ethical questions of quality, fair play
and status. Can a competent translation be attempted without remuneration and without
the employment of professionals? How reliable is the crowdsourced work compared to
work performed by knowledgeable professionals? What if the crowd-sourcers’ detailed
knowledge of the series they are eager to translate results in an actually better translation
than that by a professional who only has a linguistic competence? As Diaz Cintas
(2012:66) admits, there has not been a proper study done on this, but crowd-sourcers tend
to be better at “some of the gimmicks and idiosyncracies of the series”. Besides, amateur
translation disrupts conventional binaries such novice/professional,
professional/volunteer, natural/trained translator which have lingered for a long time
across TS. As a result of open source softwares, online sharing, collaboration and
volunteerism, users, consumers of translation can now also become producers. In this
connection, Cronin (2010:4) shows how the interactive web makes the notion of “an
agent who produces a translation for consumption by audience” irrelevant. In lieu of the
“production-oriented model of externality”, new forms of translation supported by the
Internet are characterized by “a consumer-oriented model of internality.” Thus, the
potential audience is also the producer: “the consumer becomes an active producer or
prosumer” (ibid.). Such a shift makes traditional distinctions between active translation
agents and passive translation recipients disputable (Brems, Meylaerts and van Doorslaer
2014:5). Getting back to another popular avenue of research in technological TS, video
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game translation has to be mentioned. Video game translation is a blend of audiovisual
translation and software localization. As Mangiron and O’Hagan (in Munday 2016:287)
claim, creativity and originality is expected in the first place from the translator in order
to achieve an entertaining game, which requires renaming of characters and elements,
using neologisms or non-standard dialects. This opens up the way for ‘transcreation’.
Over the past few years, there has been the tendency towards treating transcreation as
being something superior to translation. Admittedly, transcreation has become a
buzzword in TS; some of its definitions have been placed within functionalist
perspectives, within the translation of poetry or the translation of computer games, as
described above. Despite being accused of an elusive modern concept in TS, it may be
interpreted as a strategy to overcome the bounds of untranslatability9 , requiring fluency,
flexibility, and originality, compelling the translator not only to conceive new words, but
also to imagine new worlds (Gaballo 2012:111). In the digital 2010’s, translation is often
subsumed into the acronym GILT standing for globalization, internationalization,
localization and translation (Jimenéz-Crespo 2013:24-39). Localization stands for the
adaptation of the product to the target locale, “the combination of a socio-cultural region
and a language in industrial setting” (ibid:12). Localization may involve the substitution
of inappropriate cultural symbols and the translation of text, including the need to fit
specific space constraints on the page/screen. Although some nowadays admit that the
difference between localization and translation may be blurred, generally localization is
seen by the translation industry as a superordinate term which encompasses translation.
Put in the words of the Localisation Industry Standards Association (LISA), “localization
involves taking a product and making it linguistically and culturally appropriate to the
target locale (country/region and language) where it will be used and sold” (Munday
2016:288). Similarly to transcreation, localization seems a somewhat slippery term and
when used, it should always be preceded by premodifiers such ‘linguistic’ or ‘cultural’
(Bernal in Gaballo 2012:97). The last up-to-date paradigm for technological TS is
represented by corpus-based translation studies. The paradigm has lately benefited not
only from monolingual corpora but also from comparable bilingual and parallel corpora.
As for the monolingual corpora, apart from the wellknown British National Corpus and
the COBUILD Bank of English, the Global Corpus of Webbased English10 may
continue to be used more than ever in the foreseeable future. In contrast to the other
corpora, its chief advantage rests in being able to compare the incidence and use of words
in several varieties of English. For translators, especially parallel corpora, based on
source text-target text pairs which when aligned allow the translation strategies to be
investigated, are gaining relevance. Outstanding contemporary examples include
Linguee, MyMemory, OPUS and the Translational English Corpus11, a computerised
collection of contemporary translational English texts held at the Centre for Translation
and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester. In sum, in the context of the
technological determination as depicted above, the interaction between theory and
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practice should strongly be emphasized and more incorporated even into the translator
training. As new computer tools are becoming available and continue to improve in our
digital age, so too will the practice of producing translations alter.

5. Economic TS
As argued throughout this paper, since its formative years, TS has clearly experienced
several turns which have all put an emphasis on a particular new strand of research. Yet,
at the same time, there has been one thing that has been largely overlooked in this
inundation of turns; this being a tangible missing economic aspect of translation. The first
signs of a change in translators’ (and society’s) thinking, though, emerged as early as the
1980’s when translational action theory was proposed by Holz-Mänttäri. This placed
professional commercial translation in a broader sociocultural context, using the jargon
of management and business. In Holz-Mänttäri’s view, translation is viewed as a
communicative transaction involving a series of roles and players (see Munday
2016:124-125). Thirty years on, in order to understand the new economic and financial
dimensions of translating, there crops up a need for interdisciplinary studies combining
TS and business studies. As a recent study by Henter (2016:24) confirms, the gap
between market requirements and the actual skills of translators seems quite obvious.
Many translation graduates complain of not having the necessary technical knowledge
and of lacking business skills. Most of their complaints revolve around three main areas:
the lack of knowledge about business/freelance activity; the lack of knowledge about
CAT tools and the lack of available specialization (ibid:53-54).

What is alarming in the 2010’s is that although the translation industry seems to be doing
better than ever,12 quite paradoxically, a lot of freelance translators in many European
countries seem unable to make a living out of their profession. Nearly as many as a half
of the respondents participating in a survey across all of Europe by Henter (2016) stated
that they could hardly keep above the poverty threshold with their income compared to
European standards. Another paradox that contemporary translation graduates find
themselves in is that although university classes are perceived by them as intriguing and
beneficial, after finishing their formal education, there seem to be difficulties for
translators in finding and keeping clients, and establishing themselves successfully in the
market (ibid). In this light, Gambier (2014:8) calls for an economic turn in TS. This
means that translators should emerge from their proverbial translator bubbles and should
seriously start to deal with the real questions of costs, investments, modes of payments
etc. in translation. A possible solution could be in a closer collaboration of TS with
business and ELT teaching, which could bring a whole lot of new incentives how to
assert themselves among fierce competition in a contemporary world. Accordingly, TS as
a science should start to reflect on these things and should be more helpful in analysing
the multi-faceted present-day market, which is equally the domain of freelancer amateurs,
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translator novices and professionals alike. At the same time, it is vital to realize that at
present clients tend to be more well-informed, demanding their end products to respect
terminology and protocol format, and all for the lowest possible price. Letting clients
treat translators in this way, however, is a dead end in a translator’s social ranking
because producing quality translations at the lowest possible price will never ever make
the public truly value the work of a translator. In the 2010’s, translator’s remuneration
should adequately reflect the harsh realities of their bicultural language work and make it
a tad more comparable to other academic professions. All in all, similarly to the
technological turn in TS, the economic turn calls for a need for a greater interaction
between theory and practice of translation.

6. Anthropological TS
Lastly, according to Huťková and Bohušová (2016:13-14) there is a new emergent
approach symptomatic of contemporary TS research performed with focus on minor
languages, i.e. an anthropological TS. The following pertain to contemporary
anthropological TS: an interest in the issues of power which influence both the translator
and editor in their topic choice and text editing, an increased interest in ‘otherness’ and
dealing with marginal issues and their becoming visible. In anthropological TS, there is
an overall ‘anti-mainstream’ attitude and an attendant interest in minority languages and
cultures. In this fashion, there is a shift from traditional (especially the former linguistic
and literary) approaches and a clearer orientation towards a cross-section
interdisciplinarity. Another area of interest lies in the reflection on globalization,
multiculturalism and identity in their tensions towards the ‘undefiled’ local. The issue of
a translator’s ethics in relation to a source text as well as a commissioner is being
discussed more than ever. Breaking the boundaries of the local and the foreign and the
ensuing penetration of the creolized into the core opens up the way for the continuation
of the research into hybridity. This remains a central hot topic of the western TS where
hybridity continues to be examined from globalizing and postcolonial perspectives.13
The interest in hybridity in TS could be interpreted as a reaction to identity crisis where
the latter is a consequence of opposing and confusing temporal and spatial relationships
of the contemporary globalized world which does not unite, but disrupts the borders of
the local world (see Hall 2000). Seen from an angle of postcolonial theory, a translation
is “an appropriation, a text we make our own to a greater or lesser degree so as to avoid
the full alienation of engagement with the foreign” (Wright 2016:85). By contrast,
Chesterman (2009:84) claims that translation is a process in which “mutation or
modification is normal, not exceptional”. The mutation which emerges as the source text
is transferred results in a new meta-text, one that both resembles its source and introduces
variation. Therefore, translation is a special kind of text: a hybrid entity that is connected
in a unique way to a preceding text, its proto-text.

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Overall, it seems that anthropological TS should promote a deeper dialogue between
minorities and majorities and map their mutual (power) relations. Having the future
direction of TS in mind, this kind of research could be conducted in the triangulation area
between ethics, politics and sociology of translation phenomena (Brems, Meylaerts and
van Doorslaer 2014:9). 7. Conclusion and implications To sum up, the present paper has
shown the huge breadth of research in contemporary TS which is increasing at an even
faster pace. As follows from the preceding paragraphs, the boundaries of the discipline
should be stretched by both theoretical reflection and empirical practice and their mutual
cooperation. TS has been able to become a fully-fledged discipline but the price in the
2010’s seems to be its fragmentation. This brings up the question of how much dialogue
exists today between TS and its potentially related sub-fields. Nowadays it is becoming
virtually impossible for a TS scholar to embrace all its emergent research areas. New
research areas call for new and broader definitions of translation such as post-editing,
fansubbing, crowdsourcing, transcreation, localization etc. This shows that translation in
the 21st century is not a ready-made concept and what really is translation has become
problematized. The above-mentioned conceptualizations also imply that translation has
become a notion to be negotiated. Taking the proliferation of new labels for translation
into consideration, it seems as if the era of post-translation has commenced. Over the past
years, there have also been shifts in the different functions of translation. As we have
seen, TS is increasingly occupied with the implementation of new sub-fields
(localization, amateur translation, corpus studies etc.). Yet, there is a downside to such
progress, this being the danger of internal fragmentation. It is not clear where the balance
is between the need for variety and this risk of fragmentation. Hence, TS in the 2010’s
may be rightly considered a multidiscipline lacking unity. Beyond doubt, within the next
decade or so, the list of possible turns, as traced throughout this paper, must surely be re-
evaluated yet again.

Reconstructed from :
1. More Recent Avenues of Research in Contemporary Translation Studies (Pre-print
version) by Klaudia Bednarova-Gibova
2. Translation Studies by Jeremy Munday
3. Translation Studies Encyclopedia by Mona Baker

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 INTERPRETING STUDIES

1. The concept of interpreting

2. Conceptual distinctions
3. Interpreting as a profession

Source: reconstructed from scholarly ideas of

FRANZ PÖCHHACKER in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies

1. The concept of interpreting

The concept of interpreting as the act of rendering something comprehensible has
presumably been rooted in human thought since ancient times, and long before writing
in one language was translated into another. Unlike written translation, which attracts
attention to the materiality of the text(s), the ephemeral act of interpreting
foregrounds the human agent performing it. Thus, some of the oldest expressions
used to refer to the concept of interpreting have through the ages also served as
designations for the figure of the interpreter. This is well attested for the Assyro-
Babylonian root targumânu/turgumânu, which dates back as far as 1900 BC E.
Though the etymology of the expression remains unclear, its corresponding Aramaic
form targma-na-/turgma-na-(meaning „explain‟) is the origin of the Arabic term
tarjuma-n(‫ )ت رجمان‬and its descendants in various languages (Vermeer 1992),
including the Byzantine Greek word dragomános, which came to designate the
DRAGOMANS during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, the Turkish form
tercümanled to the Hungarian tolmács, which in turn shaped the Middle High German
word tolmetsche. The central semantic component of „explaining‟ is also found in
the Greek word hermeneus,

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which, though of uncertain etymology, is the origin of the term
„hermeneutics‟, the theory of the exegesis (interpretation) of texts, later developed
into a theory of human understanding. The fact that hermeneus denoted a translator or
interpreter, like its Latin counterpart interpres (Hermann 1956/2002), points to the
various ways in which linguistic choices available in particular languages have shaped
the concept of interpreting and its status in relation to the concept of translation. Thus,
modern Slavic languages do not have a separate term for interpreting, which is
therefore denoted by qualifying the generic term for translation, in this case pereklad, as
„oral‟. Similarly, yi(譯) was used in classical Chinese to refer to translation and
interpreting as well as translators and interpreters, and the term kouyi(口譯), denoting
„oral translation‟, was coined only in twentieth-century Modern Standard Chinese
(Lung 2009b). The same applies to terms used in medieval times in KOREA,
where the lexical element yo k̆meant
„interpreting‟/‟translating‟. However, there were also expressions such asso l̆ - in,
literally meaning „tongue person‟. The conceptual linkage between language and
„tongue‟, which is also found in the way interpreters were designated as lenguas in
colonial SPAIN, points to ORALITY as a crucial aspect of interpreting. More than its
obvious link with speech, orality highlights the production of utterances as a dynamic
process of situated action, and hence need not exclude utterances insigned language.
In either language modality, interpreting relies on features of NONVERBAL
COMMUNICATION and is characterized, in particular, by the need for
communicative performance in real time. This conceptualization of interpreting also
informs the proposal by Otto Kade (1968) to distinguish interpreting from translation
not by the use of spoken versus written language, but based on the immediacy of
the process. Thus, Kade views

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interpreting as a form of translational activity in which a first and final rendition in
another language is produced on the basis of a one-time presentation of an utterance
in a source language. Kade‟s definition, which relies on the specification that the
source message in interpreting cannot be repeated (replayed, reviewed) and that the
interpretation (target text) is produced under time pressure, with little opportunity for
correction and revision, naturally accommodates SIGNED LANGUAGE
INTERPRETING (усний переклад жестових мов) as well as SIGHT
INTERPRETING/TRANSLATION (переклад з листва). However, some challenges
to this definitional approach come from recent manifestations of interpreting that
involve a previewing or replaying of the source, such as delayed-broadcast NEWS
INTERPRETING (переклад новин) and recorder-assisted SIMULTANEOUS
CONSECUTIVE (переклад онлайн- чатів в режимі реального часу). As indicated
above, the extent to which the conceptual boundary between interpreting and (written)
translation is reflected in distinct lexical expressions depends on the linguistic
resources available and, much more so, on categorization needs and preferences shaped
by the experiential context: whereas an oral culture might focus on oral performance
skills (as in the case of „professional linguists‟ organization AFRICA), a civilization
that prizes literacy may have no special regard (nor special term) for interpreting, and
simply include it, as a marginal phenomenon, within its dominant notion of
translation. Dynamics of this nature can be discerned even in the HISTORY of
interpreting in recent centuries, and have also had an influence on the evolution of
INTERPRETING STUDIES as a discipline.

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 2. Conceptual distinctions
Notwithstanding the impact of linguistic and sociocultural factors on the feasibility
and acceptance of conceptual distinctions, defining the relationship between the concepts
of interpreting and translation is arguably fundamental to a thorough conceptual
analysis. On the whole, this relationship can be summarized, for present purposes, as
both hyponymous and „antonymous‟. Given the widespread use of the term
„translation‟ in a wider sense that encompasses any translational activity, interpreting
can be viewed as a hyponym of the superordinate term „translation‟, and interpreting
hence considered as a form of translation. At the same time, interpreting and
translation can be defined (e.g. with reference to Kade 1968) as distinct from each
other, and positioned at opposite ends of the oral–literate continuum. Once this basic
distinction has been made, the concept of interpreting can be differentiated further by
applying a number of relevant criteria. Aside from the modality of the language(s)
involved, which serves to contrast spoken language with signed language interpreting,
the most common distinction is made in terms of the temporal relationship between the
interpretation (target text) and the source text, which yields CONSECUTIVE
INTERPRETING (послідовний усний переклал) and SIMULTANEOUS
INTERPRETING (синхронний усний переклад) as the two main modes of
interpreting. In a looser sense, different „modes‟ can also be identified with reference
to the directness of the interpreting process (RELAY INTERPRETING –
опосередкований або естафетний чи двоступеневий усний переклад) and the use
of technology to deliver the interpretation, as in the case of REMOTE
INTERPRETING provided in „distance mode‟. Much more relevant, however, are
conceptual distinctions with reference to the SETTINGS in which interpreter-
mediated social contacts take place. On the

16
broadest level, inter-social (or inter-national) scenarios, involving diplomats,
politicians, scientists, business leaders or other types of representatives of comparable
standing, can be viewed as different from intra-social (community-based) ones, in
which one of the interacting parties is an individual speaking on his or her own behalf.
The latter, subsumed under the broad heading of COMMUNITY INTERPRETING
(усний переклад для потреб громади), allow multiple subdivisions in terms of
different institutional contexts, including LEGAL INTERPRETING, HEALTHCARE
INTERPRETING and EDUCATIONAL
INTERPRETING, with numerous institution-related subtypes. Yet another
conceptual dimension that yields an important distinction is the type or format of
interaction: interpersonal face-to-face dialogue, as the most natural form of
communicative encounter, can be contrasted with the more ritualized format of a
conference, yielding DIALOGUE INTERPRETING (усний діалоговий переклад)
and CONFERENCE INTERPRETING (усний переклад конференцій) respectively
as major subtypes of interpreting. A number of additional criteria can be brought to
bear on the analysis of interpreting as a concept, all of which serve to highlight its
complex and multifaceted nature. Two examples are the STATUS of interpreting as a
PROFESSION (and of interpreters as professionals) and, most fundamentally
perhaps, the extent to which interpreting is seen as a human performance or a feat of
computer hardware and software. Here again, social and technological changes are
making their mark on the concept of interpreting, as increasing attention is given to
NON-PROFESSIONAL INTERPRETING, and technological progress requires
MACHINE INTERPRETING to be taken more seriously as an option for service
delivery. Such fundamental shifts have momentous implications not only for

17
the concept of interpreting, but also for the way interpreting is conceptualized in
theoretical terms (see Pöchhacker 2004a)–as a form of
„verbal transfer‟, „cognitive information processing‟, „text production‟,
DISCOURSE MANAGEMENT or MEDIATION.
3. Interpreting as a profession
Interpreting as a profession has been a major topic of writings and research in
INTERPRETING STUDIES. Handbooks on professional practice and applied
research on a range of professional issues have contributed vitally to the construction
and development of the profession. On the other hand, the interpreting profession has
been an object of theorizing as well as empirical research.
Key concepts and approaches. In sociological research on occupations, the concepts
of profession, professionalization and professionalism have been developed as central
heuristic tools to explain the social position or development of occupational groups.
In everyday language, the term
„profession‟ is used to refer to a type of occupation that requires special
EDUCATION and skills, and consequently enjoys recognition and a certain STATUS
in society. Although the term has been common in sociology since the early nineteenth
century, its use is still controversial among social scientists. While some authors
consider it an appropriate analytical concept for the study of archetypical
occupational groups (e.g. in medicine or law), others refrain from using it in
thisgeneral sense and treat it as a folk concept and an element of the subjective
language of practitioners (Wrede 2012). As early as 1962, Becker (1976) pointed
to the ambiguity of the term
„profession‟, with its descriptive as well as moral and evaluative sense, concluding
that it should therefore be treated as a social symbol. Freidson (1988) argued,
accordingly, that it makes sense to study professions only with

18
reference to their specific historical and regional contexts, and not as a generalizable
scientific concept with universally applicable traits. The trait (or
„checklist‟) approach to distinguishing professions from occupations, which was
prominent until the late 1960s, is a legacy of the Anglo-American functionalist school
of thought. It focusses on functional and structural traits of an occupation, such as (a) a
skill based on theoretical knowledge; (b) a skill requiring education and training; (c)
demonstration of COMPETENCE by passing a test; (d) integrity by adherence to a
code of ETHICS; (e) service for the public good; and (f) organization, none of which
are universally acknowledged as essential (Millerson 1964). In response to the
criticism of the static concept of profession, the idea of a continuum has been
introduced, which serves to defuse the controversy over how a profession is to be
defined. According to this proposal, all occupations can be placed on a continuum
extending from „full professions‟ at one end, to „semi-professions‟ in the middle and
„non-professions‟ at the other end. The process for achieving the status of a full
profession is denoted as „professionalization‟, while the reverse process is called „de-
professionalization‟ (Hermano-wicz & Johnson 2014). This approach is in line with
the idea that occupations are neither static nor monolithic, and do not necessarily fit
into one single category. The idea of a continuum shifts attention from static
conceptions of professions to social processes. Thus,Wilensky (1964) suggests a
prototypical sequence of five stages of professionalization: (1) making the occupation
full- time; (2) establishing formal training; (3) developing a professional association;
(4) pushing for legalized protection; and (5) adopting a code of ethics. While
Wilensky‟s model draws attention to the role of organizations and contexts, it still
reflects the functional view of professional identity in terms of social prestige,
foregrounding a limited number of professions as

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social elites. Some authors therefore prefer to speak of a „professional project‟ (Larson
1977), understood as a generalized course of collective action to forge a coherent
IDEOLOGY. This line of thought has its roots in the early twentieth-century Chicago
school of sociology, which is based on interactional social psychology and associated
with such names as Elliot Freidson, Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss. These
scholars focussed on the „social drama of work‟ (Wrede 2012: 1397) and sought to
understand how face-to-face interactions are shaped by, and shape, social order. As a
critical answer to the positivism of functionalist theorizing, the perspective on
professional privilege and dominance, centred on the notion of power, became
prominent in the 1970s through Freidson‟s (1970) study of the medical profession.
Magali Sarfatti Larson‟s (1977) more system-based work views social mobility and
market control not as reflections of expertise or ethical standards, but as the outcome
of “an attempt to translate one order of scarce resources–special knowledge and
skills–into another–social and economic rewards” (Larson 1977: xvii). Maintaining
scarcity is seen as implying atendency to monopoly, hence the need for a professional
project to achieve this within recognized areas of EXPERTISE. Unlike
professionalization as a process, the concept of professionalism refers to the way
practitioners define their collective social pursuits in terms of a „work culture‟,
including an ideology, value systems and ethics, as well as forms of (inter)action
(Burkart 2006). Professionalism therefore comprises intrapersonal, interpersonal and
public aspects. In sociology, professionalism was initially treated in a positive sense as
a normative virtue, and subsequently, in a more pessimistic interpretation, as a
successful ideology serving practitioners‟ occupational self-interest. In more recent
approaches, professionalism is viewed as a discursive resource that has strong appeal
for

20
practitioners in their development of work identities and senses of self (Evetts 2014).
Most researchers now agree that there is no need to draw a clear-cut line between
professions and other (expert) occupations. Evetts suggests a pragmatic operational
definition, comprising “occupations which are predominantly service-sector and
knowledge-based and achieved sometimes following years of higher/further education
and specified years of vocational training and experience” (2014: 33). She adds that
“sometimes professional groups are also elites with strong political links and
connections, and some professional practitionersare licensed as a mechanism of
market closure and the occupational control of the work”.
Certification is the process by which a person‟s COMPETENCE, knowledge, or
skills in a particularfield of activity are assessed against predetermined standards. The
term „accreditation‟, often used interchangeably with certification, refers more
specifically to a third-party evaluation process applied to a program or an institution
(see Browning et al. 1996). Like EDUCATION, certification is often considered an
integral part of the professionalization of an occupation, as it contributes to assuring
and enhancing the quality of practice in that occupation (Shanahan et al. 1994).
Formal certification in the field of interpreting did not exist until the 1970s, despite
the fact that professional associations and training institutions–both considered
critical to the STATUS of a PROFESSION–were established decades earlier. Thus,
for a long time, membership of the International Association of Conference
Interpreters (AIIC), which requires endorsement of applicants‟ qualification by active
members („sponsors‟), represented the only affirmation of QUALITY for conference
interpreters, functioning similarly to certification. The end-of-training ASSESSMENT
performed by many interpreter training institutions in the form of exit examinations
also

21
 serves as a type of certification for students, though with limited influence due to its
program-based scope. In a plea for certification as a way to boost the professional
standing of community interpreters, Roberts (1994) pointed to the limitations of the
evaluation performed at the end of training, and emphasized that community
interpreters‟ skills should be assessed and their competency guaranteed by a
professional body in order to achieve national recognition. Along these lines, the
US Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) has operated a certification system in
the field of signed language interpreting since 1972.

TRANSLATION VS INTERPRETING

General skills required in quality interpreting are much the same as those in
written translation, namely:
- language proficiency in source and target languages
- analytical skills
- background knowledge
- cultural knowledge
- subject area knowledge

Specific skills required in quality interpreting are as follows:

- listening skills and recall
- concentration skills
- memory management
- stamina
- interpersonal skills

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- public speaking skills

- ethical behavior

The Mechanism of Synchronization in Interpreting

This is a hierarchically organized mechanism of regulation which ensures parallel and

simultaneous flow of the three processes (message comprehension, processing and
delivery into the target language). Prof.Shvachko gave a thorough analysis of its
algorithm (2004: 21-22).

Simultaneous interpreting is distinguished among the other translation activities by its

structure, speed of translation actions delivery, and by the type of linguistic
transformations of lexical and grammatical organization of utterances during the
translation process.

The most important distinctive feature of the structure of SI lies in parallel

management of listening to a speech in one language while making translation
choices and speaking in another language. Under the conditions of SI these processes
are defined as orientation in a source text, searching and making translation choices
and their realization.

Coordination of these processes is reached by various means depending on

proficiency of an interpreter and particular conditions such as speech rate of a
speaker, complexity degree of a source text, and some other factors.

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Interpreting is claimed to be a specific kind of speech behavior given the fact that
it an efficient balance of both verbal and non-verbal language including body
language, eye contact, and voice quality. Consecutive interpreting can be compared
to the format of a presentation. Along with language (verbal) skills non-verbal
behavior is to be self-controlled. It is essential to establish a rapport (agreement and
understanding ) between the interpreter and the target audience. Ethical behavior is
to be given a special attention.

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