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Translation and Interpreting

Our primary research purpose is to find out more about how translating and interpreting work.

We explore how translating and interpreting work in a professional, language and cultural sense.

Professionalism and expertise

Here we explore issues such as:

  • what ‘professionalism’ and ‘expertise’ mean for literary and non-literary translators, and for interpreters
  • the professionalisation of translators and interpreters, social equality and social justice
  • the skills, working processes and strategies of translation and interpreting professionals
  • emotion, cognition and creativity in translating and interpreting
  • translating and interpreting, communication and interaction in various contexts (law, literature, etc)
  • collaborative translation, especially of drama and poetry
  • how translators and interpreters can be trained and assessed

As well as expanding academic knowledge in this field, our findings feed directly into our translator and interpreter training programmes.

Professional discussion

Society, culture and identity

Here we explore issues such as:

  • how translators and interpreters communicate but also shape images of other peoples, times and cultures
  • the role of translation in the transmission and reception of political ideas
  • how issues of identity, gender, sexuality and power affect translating and interpreting
  • how ideology and beliefs interact with translating and interpreting
  • translating women’s writing
  • the role of literary translating in nation-building, conflict and reconstruction
  • how translators bridge geographic distances, and bridge time gaps between past and present
Students Talking

Language expertise

We work in a wide range of languages, including:

  • Chinese
  • Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian
  • Dutch
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Spanish

We also focus on issues involving these languages’ users.

Students talking with coffee

Chinese and English

Chinese and English are critically important to the world economy and world culture. Translation and interpreting between these two languages is a huge and growing professional field where, quite simply, more needs to be known.

Our Chinese-English research specialises in a large range of topics, for example:

  • legal interpreting
  • drama translation
  • translating/interpreting pedagogy

Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian

We also carry out cutting-edge research on translation from Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian (the main languages of former Yugoslavia) into English. A key aim here is to find out the role of translating (particularly literary translating) during conflict, reconstruction and nation-building.

French

We are investigating how contemporary, transgressive French and Francophone women's writing is translated into English.

Dutch

Our School hosts an inter-university research project investigating how Dutch and UK poets, helped by bilingual ‘language advisors’, translate each other’s’ poems. This project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Spanish

In Spanish, we study how translation has been playing a key role in the emergence and development of contemporary political movements and parties in Spain.

Key research interests

Some of the key interests of our community of staff and student researchers are:

  • professional translation and interpreting
  • translator and interpreter training and assessment
  • literary translation
  • audio-visual translation
  • translation, language and culture
  • translation, society and identity
  • interpreting, multilingualism, social justice, conflict and reconciliation
  • interpreting, translation, globalisation and politics
  • the psycholinguistics of, cognition and emotion in interpreting