Translation Spaces - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2025

This article critically addresses the contemporary challenge of broadening the concept of censorship, a consequence of theories emphasizing constitutive modes of censorship. These theories often equate all forms of exclusion and control with censorship, creating ambiguity around the concept. To tackle this issue, this paper offers a redefined perspective on censorship in translation within a Bourdieusian field framework. By adopting this new conceptual framework, the article explores and elucidates the behaviors of various actors within the context of translation censorship, shedding light on how this refined approach clarifies the concept and offers a valuable tool for understanding its dynamics in the specific domain of translation.

This paper concerns unpaid human participation in translation, a phenomenon that has been extensively examined and conceptualised with numerous terms. As human participation in translation activities grows, often without remuneration, it is important to explore possible explanations for such unpaid human participation. While scholars have sought to do so, I argue that their theoretical frameworks fall short in sufficiently accounting for the explanatory factors behind such participation. To address this issue, this paper proposes an explanatory theory called Self-Determined Participation (SDP). It provides a systematic means through which we can categorise, stratify, and account for the common and diverse empirical findings about why people consciously participate in translation without monetary payment. As such, it helps us move beyond loosely listing explanatory factors and towards generating more viable and meaningful explanations of why translation matters to individual people.

In this paper, we investigate stylistic translation revision competence, more specifically if and how corpus-focused instruction (CFI) improves translation trainees’ ability to detect and correct stylistic inappropriateness in Dutch — English translations of academic texts. Two forms of CFI — ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) and prepared corpora — are compared to find out (1) if CFI helps trainees to make more informed style-related revision decisions and (2) which form of CFI triggers the highest success rates. Adopting an experimental crossed-conditions design, we assigned 32 trainees to two groups (DIY vs prepared). We collected quantitative data, using four stylistic revision tests. We found that CFI did not have a statistically significant effect on participants’ revision products, but it did affect their revision processes. This indicates that corpora can be used as effective translation revision tools, but more research is required to find out how CFI could be adjusted to improve revision success rates in the future.

This article presents the findings of an in-depth, participant-oriented study using vignette-based interviews to explore migrants’ use of machine translation (MT) in healthcare settings in the Netherlands. Interviewees engaged with a narrative vignette depicting a recently arrived migrant encountering language barriers when reading a vaccination invitation letter, communicating with a health professional at a vaccination center, and answering a health questionnaire. The results show that, while MT is the most commonly used and often first-reported mediation strategy in healthcare contexts, it is not used in isolation. Instead, MT is used alongside other mediation strategies, including seeking support from community members to translate or verify MT-mediated translations and using English for more direct communication. The article discusses these findings in relation to personal and institutional responsibility in healthcare contexts. Drawing from the analysis, the article proposes two recommendations: one relating to MT Literacy training and the other to community-based initiatives.

This study explores audio accessibility in Arabic-localized video games by examining nonverbal subtitles for players who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing (NV-SDH) in the English game Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018). A multimodal bilingual corpus of screen recordings from the game was qualitatively analyzed using NVivo. A three-layered tagging framework was developed in NVivo to tag the corpus and classify the types of NV-SDH, their functions, and the translation strategies used to adapt them into Arabic. Findings revealed that NV-SDH were primarily used during gameplay and minimally used in cutscenes and the user interface. NV-SDH were translated into Arabic using three approaches — literal, word-for-word, and idiomatic translation, with varying accuracy. This study proposes a function-based framework for NV-SDH localization, categorizing them as immersion-based or action-based. It also suggests best practices for translating these elements into Arabic. The results offer valuable insights for game developers, localizers, and researchers.

This exploratory study investigates the use of online translation tools by Ukrainian war refugees in Czechia as a key multilingual communication strategy during their initial months of displacement, particularly in the absence of interpreters. The study aims to identify conceptual lenses that can guide further research on this strategy within translation studies. We explore the constitutive factors shaping communication mediated by machine translation (MT), the perceived benefits and drawbacks of MT use, and the contexts in which MT is deliberately avoided. Our findings suggest that MT use by displaced persons can be examined through concepts such as translational agency, power, national identity, and translational assimilation and accommodation. Practical implications include integrating MT tools into refugee language education, organizing MT literacy trainings for displaced persons and aid providers, and developing guidelines supporting multilingual communication in migration crises as part of state translation policy.