讲座 | The Evolution of Conceptualisation of Translation in TIS

On science, cars and their drivers

The Evolution of the Conceptualisation of Translation in TIS

Professor Ricardo Muñoz

MC2 Lab, Università di Bologna, Italy

Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies is one of the oldest fields of research in our realm—in fact, decades older than Translation Studies. At the beginning, it was computer scientists and psycholinguists who were interested in the cognition of translators and interpreters. Both of them were interested in the human mind as a machine. Computer scientists aimed (and they often still do) to learn how our brains translate so that the purported mechanism could be reproduced in computers. Psycholinguists saw in extreme cases of language use, such as simultaneous interpreting, a testbed to study their hypotheses about the structure and workings of the mind. When their approach failed to yield significant results, the language departments received a mandate from the ALPAC report to focus on explaining how humans translate. However, together with the responsibility, we were handed down a conceptual apparatus and a set of ways and goals that did not do justice to the nature of mind or even to our interests: strategies, translation units, problem-solving, working memory have taken the lion's share of our efforts until, with the development of new theories of cognition, we have shifted our attention away from the machine. We are now no longer studying the cars but their drivers.

Ricardo Muñoz Martín, PhD, has been a freelance translator since 1987, ATA certified for English-Spanish in 1991. He studied at several European and American universities until he was granted a PhD from UC Berkeley in 1993. He lectured at seven American and Spanish universities before he joined the Department of Interpreting & Translation of the University of Bologna. There, he directs the Laboratory for Multilectal Mediated Communication & Cognition (MC2 Lab), devoted to the empirical research of multilectal mediated communication events from the perspective of Cognitive Translatology (situated cognition). As a visiting scholar or guest speaker, he has travelled widely in Europe, America and China. Prof Muñoz is also a member of the TREC and HAL networks and co-editor of the journal Translation, Cognition & Behavior.

All Welcome!

v Time: 1:00-2:30pm (GMT+0), Wed 10^th March 2021

v Zoom meeting ID: 953 6203 4238

v Password: 688382

v Contact: Dr Sergey Tyulenev, [e-mail]