The contributions of this volume explore the dynamics of the interface between the cognitive and situational levels in translation and interpreting. Until relatively recently, there has been an invisible line in translation and interpreting studies between cognitive research (e.g., into mental processes or attitudes) and sociological research (e.g., concerning organization, status, or institutions). However, rapid developments in translation and interpreting practices (professional, non-professional) have brought to the fore the need to rethink theoretical perspectives and to apply new research methods. The chapters in this volume aim to contribute to this discussion through conceptual and/or empirical research. Drawing on different theoretical and methodological frameworks, they offer insights into diverse translation and interpreting situations, in a number of different countries and cultures, and their consequences for individual and collective cognition. Originally published as special issue of Translation Spaces 5:1 (2016).

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including role of cultural knowledge in the translation process, translation performance and metaphoricity.

This case study examines a Swedish TV interview with a Soviet pop singer in 1985 where the talk show host, who is both a trained interpreter and an experienced media journalist, acts as a dual-role mediator, interviewing and interpreting at the same time. The analysis is contextualized within the political and military relations between Sweden and the USSR in the 1980s. Theoretically, the study draws on ethics of interpreting, ethics of entertainment and the notions participation status or footing. A potential challenge for a dual-role mediator is that two different ethical stances are involved; here, ethics of entertainment (entertainment, comfort, culture value orientation) and ethics of interpreting (impartiality, neutrality, accuracy). These may clash, but the study claims that the different stances can also be used to the participants’ advantage. Here, the role of talk show host dominates over the role of interpreter, and interpreting ethics can be flouted and played with if it suits the purposes of the former. The study shows the complexity of dual-role mediation and emphasizes the need to take into account the perspectives of both of the involved roles in research on participants’ interaction and changes of footing.

Artikeln behandlar dialekt i barnboksöversättning, på grundval av Emil i Lönneberga i översättning till ryska. Materialet är a) 20 olika översättningar till ryska (2 publicerade och 18 gjorda av ryska universitetsstudenter i svenska), b) studenternas kommentarer till sina översättningar, och c) en fokusgruppsdiskussion (6 ryska universitetsstudenter i svenska) av de olika lösningarna. Studien visar en bred variation i olika lösningstyper och konkreta lösningar. Den morfosyntaktiska lösningstypen framträder här som översättningsnorm [Toury 1995]. Den har störst frekvens i materialet, den förekommer i båda de publicerade versionerna och den tas emot mest positivt av läsarna. Övriga lösningstyper är mindre frekventa och har en mer idiosynkratisk karaktär. En jämförelse mellan översättningskommentarerna och diskussionen med läsarna visar att det inte alltid finns överensstämmelse mellan hur översättarens intention och läsarnas reception.

 This article presents a translation into Swedish of the short story Дърво без корен by the Bulgarian author Nikolaj Chajtov. The translation is accompanied by a theoretical commentary, determining the purpose (skopos) of the translation, and discussing some of the translation problems encountered, mainly the translation of proper names and place names and the translation of colloquial features and dialect. Some of the discursive strategies chosen were intended to create resistancy, in line with Venuti’s (2008) concept of foreignization. 

This book addresses the complexities of the translation process. Informed by theoretical and methodological advances in translation studies, research on writing and the expertise paradigm, it explores translation as a text reproduction task. With triangulation of data from Russian-Swedish translation – think-aloud-methodology and computer logging of the writing process - it makes a cross-sectional comparison of subjects with different amount of translation experience, highlighting crucial aspects of professional competence and expertise in translation. The book also elaborates a method for a combined product and process analysis, applying it to the study of one type of explicitation: increased cohesive explicitness of the target text. The results have implications for translation theory and pedagogy.

”Den svenska musikens fader” Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758) var kompositör och hovkapellmästare men också översättare, med kunskaper i ett flertal språk. Ett av hans tidigare verk är orkestersviten Golovinmusiken. Den komponerades till en festlighet i Stockholm, ordnad av den ryske ambassadören Nikolaj Fjodorovitj Golovin för att fira kröningen av tsar Peter II av Ryssland (1728). Artikeln analyserar och diskuterar de två hittills kända svenska primärkällorna och föreslår en delvis ny tolkning av evenemanget och dess musik.

1759 publicerades i Kungliga Vetenskapsakademiens Handlingar en beskrivning av den småländska socknen Ålhem, skriven av Anders Wijkström. Beskrivningen koncentreras på socknens naturresurser och ekonomiska förhållanden, men tar också upp i viss detalj en sockeninvånare som är döv och kommunicerar med tecken. Detta antas vara det första omnämnandet av kommunikation med tecken i en svensk kontext (Bergman & Engberg-Pedersen 2010). Föreliggande studie har två syften. För det första, att presentera tidigare okända uppgifter om den döve från samtida källor, främst kyrkböcker, husförslängder, mantalslängder och jordeböcker, för att kontextualisera 1700-talsbeskrivningen och ge en bild av några aspekter av en dövs liv på 1700-talets svenska landsbygd. För det andra, att relatera informationen i Wijkströms beskrivning till modern forskning om teckenspråk och språkmedling av familjemedlemmar, och att föreslå att beskrivningen kan vara ett tidigt svenskt exempel på tvåspråkighet och språkmedling i familjen (eng. non-professional interpreting).

Artikeln är en fallstudie av kognitiv belastning i konsekutivtolkning. Materialet kommer från ett fall av språkförmedling i dubbla roller i ett svenskt nöjesprogram på TV, där programledaren intervjuar en ryskspråkig gäst och samtidigt fungerar som tolk för de svenska TV-tittarna. Studien antar att en sådan dubbel funktion är kognitivt krävande och kan leda till kognitiv överbelastning vilket kan påverka tolkningsprocessen. Metoden är multimodal samtalsanalys för analys av yttranden, blickriktning och handrörelser. Denna analys ur ett mikroperspektiv är inbäddad i en makroanalys, där element av s.k. thick description ger situationskontext och tentativt förklarar några problem och strategier i tolkningsprocessen.  

Artikeln behandlar översättarstil, tentativt definierat som konsekventa språkliga mönster i måltexter producerade av en viss översättare. Översättarstil kan studeras ur två analytiska perspektiv, antingen i relation till källtexten eller i relation till andra texter skrivna på målspråket. I artikeln prövas om mönster i lexikala val, särskilt expliciteringar (tillägg) och preciseringar i jämförelse med källtexten, kan ingå i studiet av översättarstil. En analys av de svenska versionerna av två bulgariska noveller av författaren Jordan Raditjkov visar att den ena av de båda översättarna har en tydlig individuell profil i sina lexikala val. Slutsatsen blir att lexikala val kan ligga till grund för vidare studier.

Under 1970-80-talen översattes förhållandevis många skönlitterära verk från bulgariska till svenska. Flera översättare och förlag var aktiva i det arbetet, där också indirekt översättning, via engelska, förekom. I artikeln analyseras, med teoretisk bakgrund inom Descriptive Translation Studies och normteori (Toury 1995), återgivningen av interpunktion i direkt tal i måltexter översatta av olika översättare. Individuella översättarstilar identifieras och resultaten diskuteras i relation till förlagens ställning i den givna sociokulturella kontexten. 

Den här bibliografin förtecknar böcker om översättning och tolkning, skrivna av författare bosatta eller verksamma i Sverige. De år som bibliografin täcker, 1986 – 2015, karakteriseras av en stark utveckling av översättningsvetenskapen/Translation Studies, inte bara i Sverige utan också internationellt. Bibliografin ger en bild av vilka forskare i Sverige som arbetat med översättningsvetenskapliga frågeställningar under dessa tre decennier och deras arbeten. 

This article discusses cognitive aspects of professional community interpreting. We give an overview of earlier research into community interpreting, arguing that cognitive aspects have largely been neglected. We propose that in building a model of the mental processes of the community interpreter, different kinds of monitoring are a crucial and pervasive component. Monitoring contributes to and enables the double function of the interpreter: translating and managing the interaction of the interpreted encounter. We furthermore stress the importance of the notion of professional self-concept for explaining the interpreter’s decision-making and exemplify this by analyzing turn-taking in two Swedish-Spanish interpreted encounters.

For studying the processes involved in translation and in interpreting, retrospection is one of the few research methods equally suitable for both areas. At the first workshop on research methods in process-oriented research, in Graz in 2009, we presented the results of a pilot study of retrospection as a research method, published as Englund Dimitrova and Tiselius (2009). The study involved data from two groups (15 years of professional experience vs. no professional experience), each with 3+3 subjects (interpreter subjects vs. translator subjects, all with Swedish as their L1). The source text was a 10-minute plenary speech in English from the European Parliament, interpreted simultaneously into Swedish. For the translation data, the translator subjects translated the original European Parliament transcript of the speech, 1,093 words, writing in Translog. After the task, subjects did immediate retrospection. The first analysis of the data indicated that a challenge when using retrospection is that subjects tend to report having forgotten about some of their processes.

In this paper we report an analysis of the process data in relation to the retrospective protocols. Our focus is on reported problems and the occurrences of problem indicators in the process. It was found that most reported problems are confirmed by the presence of problem indicators in the process. However, the majority of problem indicators found in the process do not correspond to any reported problem. Hence, the subjects’ problem reports can only explain a limited number of the potential problems in the process. The need for further research into retrospection as a research method in Translation Studies is pointed out.

This paper reports on participants’ experiences with a university-level course for teachers of interpreting, given three times at Stockholm University, Sweden. An important purpose of the course was to provide a collaborative learning environment and to support and promote a feeling of common ground between educators working within various branches of interpreting. Drawing primarily upon a focus group interview and on students’ written evaluations, we have indications that the course did promote a sense of similarity between students across traditional borders. Also, an interesting difference between spoken-language interpreting educators and sign-language interpreting educators emerged. Educators with experiences from the first category of courses seemed to be much oriented towards preparing the students for a final exam, similar to the national certification test (basically, a teacher assessed proficiency test), whereas those working in sign-language- interpreting courses seemed to be more oriented to more frequent and other types of assessments of student performance (self-, peer and teacher assessments). Finally, the course seems to have provided a network for informal collaboration between interpreter educators that stayed intact over time.

The aim of this paper is to discuss some developments in empirical translation research with an experimental and cognitive perspective. The focus is on the activities and research of the network TREC (Translation, Research, Empiricism, Cognition). The network was formed in 2011, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and led by PACTE (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). It consists of translation scholars and research groups united by their common interest in empirical and experimental research, particularly in relation to the cognitive operations that underlie the task of translating.

The paper first gives a short general overview of research on translation as a cognitive activity and outlines the objectives of the TREC network. The network members, representing universities from Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA, then present their most important contributions to cognitively oriented research (topics, methods, results). Finally, some conclusions are drawn and perspectives for future research are outlined.

Language proficiency of dialogue interpreters, who typically work in the public service sector, is an under-researched area. Unlike as in the case of conference interpreters, there is no generally accepted definition of proficiency levels of working languages for dialogue interpreters. This article discusses language proficiency in dialogue interpreting. It presents a methodological problem, namely, how to define and determine a given interpreter’s stronger and weaker working languages. We discuss different methods for determining the individual interpreter’s stronger and weaker working languages, such as self-assessment, demographic, socio-linguistic questionnaire and test score (Dialang). We conclude that there is a need for more research in this area.

The chapter introduces the concept of monitoring in dialogue interpreting, and argues that it is central to understanding and learning dialogue interpreting. The chapter first outlines the epistemological and theoretical foundations of monitoring with a discussion of the distinctions between translation acts and translation events, proposed and discussed by Toury (2012), Chesterman (2015), and Muñoz (2016). Monitoring is then shortly discussed within the framework of distributed cognition. In the chapter, different theories of monitoring from Translation Studies, Speech Studies and theories of interaction, are explored, namely, Toury (1995/2012), Levelt (1983), Laver (1980), and Goodwin (1980). We discuss the monitoring concepts, exemplifying them with our own research data. We propose an understanding of monitoring as a cognitive process in dialogue interpreting, arguing that six different (sub)processes are monitored. We go through results from studies relating to monitoring in dialogue interpreting, and we also make the connection between monitoring and coordination clear. Finally, we argue that teaching students the concept of monitoring will contribute to developing their meta-cognitive awareness, which will be applied to the interpreting task. We end our chapter by giving examples of how monitoring can be taught in interpreting training.

This study addresses cognitive aspects of turn-taking and the role of experience in dialogue interpreting, by investigating the temporal and textual properties of the coupled turn (i.e. the original utterance and its interpretation). A comparison was made using a video-recorded scripted role-play between eight interpreters, with Swedish-French or Swedish-Spanish as working languages and with different levels of experience. Cognitively challenging long stretches of talk were introduced in both directions of the working languages and analyzed with a multi-modal approach. We identified a number of quantitative measures, such as the number of coupled turns and the time used. Furthermore, we qualitatively analyzed the types of renditions. The findings suggest that the mean length of time of the coupled turn, which we label processing span, is a measure that is not primarily related to interpreting experience but rather reflects the constraints of the interpreter’s working memory. A further finding is that the inexperienced interpreters have a higher percentage of reduced renditions than the experienced interpreters, and this difference is statistically significant.