International Symposium on Translation and Interpreting as Social Interaction: Affect, Behaviour and Cognition, 17-20 July 2020, UCL London

It is widely accepted that translators and interpreters do not work in isolation but “in a wider social context, interacting with other agents and with information technology” (Shih 2017: 50; See also Wang & Wang 2019). As in any effective social interaction, three components underpin translators and interpreters’ daily activities. They are: affect, behaviour and cognition (Spooner 1989).

Cognition is defined as ‘the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses’ (Oxford Dictionary 2019). In translation and interpreting, this often refers to the mental procedure of how translators and interpreters acquire and store information, and consequently plan and execute translation and interpreting activities, often under the constraints of limited resources and situational contexts. With an accumulation of these ongoing mental processing throughout translators and interpreters’ experience and career, perception, schemata and understanding are gradually developed, which consequently guide their behaviours. Whist often overlooked, affect, which refers to translators’ and interpreters’ emotion and feeling, is tightly interwoven into the fabrics of translation and interpreters’ cognition and behaviour.

To understand the entirety and complexity of translation and interpreting as social interaction, it is important to explore the interplay between translators’ and interpreters’ affect, behaviour and cognition, be it from the theoretical, empirical or methodological perspectives.
This symposium welcomes contributions related to the following themes (although not limited to):

Themes:

- Interdisciplinary studies in translation and interpreting
- Eye tracking in translation and interpreting studies
- Human and computer interaction for translators and interpreters
- Translation and the Web
- Emotions in Translation and interpreting
- Ideologies in translation and interpreting
- Technology in translation and interpreting
- Ecological approach to translation and interpreting
- Ergonomical approach to translation and interpreting
- Neurological approach to translation and interpreting
- Pedagogy for translation and interpreting
- Professional issues in translation and interpreting
- Innovation in research methodologies

Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2020

For more information, see here