Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Online First

This paper investigates how variation in the complexity of speech tasks is reflected in the temporal characteristics and disfluency patterns of speech. We examined temporal characteristics (speech rate, global articulation rate, ratio of pauses, frequency of pauses, and mean duration of pauses) and disfluency markers (overall frequency of disfluencies; frequency of filled pauses, filler words, whole-word repetitions, part-word repetitions, broken words, prolonged sounds, and revisions; frequency of disfluency clusters) in four speech production tasks (consecutive interpreting, sight translation, spontaneous speech and extemporaneous speech) with twelve speakers.

Our hypothesis, according to which the examined parameters will differ across the four tasks, was partly confirmed by the data; even though not all speech tasks differed significantly in all the examined parameters, our investigation revealed that there were significant differences between some tasks in four parameters, and between others in nine out of the fourteen parameters examined. Our data also suggest that in terms of the temporal characteristics and disfluency markers examined, the four tasks can be represented on a continuum based on the cognitive load associated with each task. At one end of the continuum and generating the least cognitive load is spontaneous speech, and at the other, generating the most cognitive load, is sight translation.

This paper takes the notion of translaboration as a stepping stone for an exploration of some of the recent debates about translational hermeneutics. In doing so, it aims to expand translaboration’s focus beyond concrete collaborations between multiple translators, or authors and translators, and to think about, and theorise, translaboration as a possible means of framing textual agents reading and writing each other within texts. The argument presented draws on both Hans-Georg Gadamer’s and Paul Ricoeur’s conceptions of the individual subject as interpretative agent, and of translation as an object of philosophical enquiry, and adopts the concept of a “hermeneutics of decipherment” ( Maitland 2017 , 38) as an alternative to dialogic models of understanding and translating. Similarly, the relationship between philosophical and translational hermeneutics is interrogated and recast as a translaborative endeavour rather than as an immediately reciprocal dialogue. Translaboration, this paper argues, thus also actively furthers the move away from what Blumczynski ( 2016 , 29) calls “an arborescent epistemological paradigm” of interdisciplinarity and contributes to animating a transdisciplinarity that is fundamentally “rhizomatic” (ibid.; see Deleuze and Guattari 2004 ) in nature.

This article introduces the concept of ‘photo-translation’ for studying documentary photography as a collaborative practice of visual translation. The visual-translational approach to photo documentation is applied in a novel way to the emerging field of contemporary migration photography, thus relating recent theoretical connections between translation and migration studies to explorations in visual studies. The study discusses how participatory and collaborative practices are increasingly used in contemporary photo documentation to challenge, if not remove, the relational ‘othering’ effect inherent in the photo-documentary representation of refugees, migrants and displaced peoples. The potential of translaboration as a mode of translational collaboration is explored through an in-depth analysis of two photo projects: (1) the participatory photo project Fotohistorias ( Gomez and Vannini 2015 ), conducted by social and information scientists Ricardo Gomez and Sara Vannini in cooperation with migrants at the US–Mexico border; and (2) the collaborative photo–graphic novel project Lampedusa: Image Stories from the Edge of Europe ( Migrant Image Research Group 2017 ), carried out by the Migrant Image Research Group under the guidance of Armin Linke. Demanding agency in visual translation proves to be essential for these participatory photo projects, since they aim to challenge dominant visual representations of how migration is narrated and represented in the media and academic discourse. For this reason, the investigation draws on new sociological approaches in Translation Studies in order to frame photo-translation as a social practice and as a form of (activist) engagement involving various agents and institutions.

This study explores the notion of translaboration in the context of audiovisual translation using Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket ( 1987 ) as a case study. Specifically, it explores the dynamics of translaboration in the Italian version of Kubrick’s film by drawing on archival methods and sources to examine the material traces left by the translation process. The study aims to unveil the translaborative dimension that characterized Kubrick’s approach to film translation, pointing to the specificity of a collaborative interaction in which one participant holds ultimate authority. Findings gleaned from translation-related material in the Stanley Kubrick Archive (University of the Arts, London) are combined with insights from working documents found among the personal papers of Riccardo Aragno, who translated Kubrick’s last five films into Italian for both dubbing and subtitling. Archival documents show that Kubrick was involved in collaborative work with his translators, sometimes adopting an interventionist approach.

Interpreting and translation are increasingly provided in the public sector via large-scale outsourced framework contracts ( Moorkens 2017 ). In the UK, one of the largest recent framework agreements for interpreting and translation was introduced between 2016 and 2017 in critical contexts for justice, including the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the police. These agreements involve new types of collaboration between new partners and agents in the delivery of interpreting and translation, who each have different aims, expectations, standards and working methods. This contribution examines these emerging complex collaborations, and is the result of a rare type of complex collaboration between academic researchers, framework contract-holders and managers, interpreters and translators, language service providers, professional associations, and users of translation and interpreting services, within the Transnational Organised Crime and Translation (TOCAT) project.

The article reports on original research conducted during the TOCAT project, and outlines and evaluates some novel, complex and ethically challenging ‘translaborations’ in police settings. The collaborations discussed are complex because of the range of parties and actors involved and because of the challenging content and settings in which the police rely on interpreting and translation. ‘Translaboration’ is used here to encompass multiple evolving collaborations between different providers and users of interpreting and translation, policy makers, trainers and researchers. Important questions of translation quality and ethics in the management of large-scale framework contexts for public service delivery are raised.

This article explores the role of translaboration in an area where collaborative translation and co-creative processes intertwine: a bilingual devised theatre rehearsal room. Scholarship has tended to focus on translated plays as cultural products and on the difficulty associated with making bilingual theatrical products accessible to unilingual audiences. Here, however, our focus is on translation within the creative process. We use two bilingual projects as examples. Each project brought together participants from two cultural backgrounds: in one case, German and Czech young people; in the other, deaf and hearing people from the UK. Possessing varying bilingual competencies, these participants employed their shared communicative repertoire to ensure the collaborative creation of new, bilingual theatrical material. Their diverse communication strategies can be regarded as translanguaging: a fluid, non-hierarchical practice that challenges the notion of uni-directional translation from a source text. We argue that in this setting, translanguaging is the practice that enables translaboration. This practice is compromised by the imposition of top-down structures that inhibit the organic development of democratic and potentially transformative environments in which problematic power relationships can be reworked. Such transformativity relies on collaboration in both devising and translation, co-creation and translaboration, and the two are mutually interdependent.