In my talk, I will discuss how I have spent the past few years disentangling links between interaction and cognition in meaning-making via the study of collaborative audio description. More specifically, I present (the) results of my postdoctoral research project MUTABLE (Multimodal Translation with the Blind, Academy of Finland, 2017–2020) which still, after three years from the project’s official ending, hasn’t stopped evolving: Empirical observations give rise to theoretical findings, and theoretical questions spark methodological adjustments.

The talk will present data and results on interactional practices of semantic and discoursive meaning constitution and meaning negotiation in team translation processes, in particular in situations when formulation problems are detected and solved. A taxonomy of meaning-making practices will be discussed, as well as the connection between semantics and norms that guide the process of professional translation. The data come from German- and Finnish-speaking audio description teams which involve blind and sighted professional describers. At the end of my talk, I will try to sketch research avenues for broadening the scope of this interactional-semantics’ approach to the study of other kinds of translation processes, including audio description as interpreting / syntolkning in mundane, everyday settings.

References

Hirvonen, M. (2024). Shared cognition in the translation process: Information processing and meaning production as interactive accomplishments. Translation Studies. E-pub ahead of print.

Hirvonen, M., Hakola, M., & Klade, M. (2023). Co-translation, consultancy and joint authorship: User-centred translation and editing in collaborative audio description. Journal of Specialised Translation, (39), 26–51.

Hirvonen, M., Viljanmaa, A. (in press). Interaction, ad hoc renderings, and shared meaning-making: Spontaneous and live audio description as forms of interpreting. To appear in Audio Description and Interpreting Studies: Interdisciplinary Crossroads, ed. by Cheng Zhan and Riccardo Moratto. Routledge.

Maija Hirvonen