The Changing Translatorial Landscape

Translatorial practices have been under constant change over the past decades. Evolving technologies and digitalisation have remodeled both the practicalities and boundaries of translation and interpreting work and the cultural and economic understandings of multilingual communication. The study of translatorial practices and professions provides a microcosm for understand the social and ethical consequencies of technologisation.

We aim to provide answers to research questions such as:

• How does changing translation technology change translatorial practices and professions? Is the understanding of translation changing?
• What kinds of new professional profiles, boundaries and competence areas are emerging?
• How do those working in various translatorial professions understand and negotiate their position in the changing landscape (role, agency, well-being at work, future prospects)?
• How and to what extent are actors socialized into different translatorial fields and how do they perceive their identity?
• What kinds of affective and ethical questions arise, and how have they been responded to?

Our research group builds on the sociological research tradition in Translation Studies, an approach Tampere-based and Tampere-raised scholars have actively participated in creating. Working with a wide network of national and international collaborators, we use multiple methods (e.g. surveys, interviews and focus groups, traditional and virtual ethnography, usability research methods) to map and understand the current landscape and its ongoing change processes.

In addition to describing and understanding the various changes, we aim to contribute to the emerging field of language industry studies in constructive ways, by providing research-based aalyses and innovations to support businesses to transform their processes and diversify their services (e.g. User-Centered Translation, UCT).

Kaisa Koskinen

Professor

kaisa.a.koskinen [at] uta.fi

+358 50 318 1193