Jan Pedersen Associate professor

These days, I mainly teach in audiovisual translation and subtitling, but I have over the years taught in diverse fields; mainly translation, but also linguistics and English, at all levels. I also supervise theses and dissertations on all levels.

For three years, I was the head Director of Studies at the Institute, with particular responsibility for translation. Having updated the undergraduate courses, I then focussed on the advanced level, and I was responsible for developing our new masters programme in translation, starting in the autumn term of 2015. I was also involved in developing a masters programme in interpreting, which launched in the autumn of 2016.

My main field of research is audiovisual translation, and I specialize in subtitling studies. I mainly focus on product-based norms studies about e.g. cultural transfer and strategies for translation problems in subtitled media. I am, however, also interested in other fields of audiovisual translation, such as fansubbing and media accessibility, such as audio description. Translation studies in general is also within my sphere of interest, as is contrastive linguistics, intercultural communication and pragmatics. I work within the descriptive paradigm.

My first large-scale project was Scandinavian Subtitles, which was a study of the norms that govern Swedish, Danish and Norwegian subtitles from a technical and cultural perspective. I then ran a project called Visualized Metaphors in Subtitling, which investigates how figures of speech are rendered in subtitled media. I am also carrying out research on Swedish subtitles produced by amateurs in the project Swedish Fansubs. I am also part of the project Increased Accessibility for Students with Disabilities through Respeaking, with colleagues from the Royal Institute of Technology and other units at Stockholm University.