15,952 research outputs found
Usability as a focus of multiprofessional collaboration: a teaching case study on user-centered translation
As professional communication needs are increasingly multilingual, the merging of
translator and technical communicator roles has been predicted. However, it may be
more advantageous for these two professional groups to increase cooperation. This
means learning to identify and appreciate their distinct but mutually complementary core
competencies. Since both professions share the ideology of being the user’s advocate,
usability is a common denominator that can function as a focal point of collaboration.
While many translation theories focus on the reader and the target context, usability
methods have not traditionally been a part of translator training. An innovation called
User-Centered Translation (UCT), which is a model based on usability and user-centered
design, is intended to help translators speak the same language as technical
communicators, and it offers concrete usability tools which have been missing from
translation theories. In this teaching case study, we discuss the teaching of four UCT
methods: personas, the implied reader, heuristic evaluation, and usability testing. We
describe our teaching experiences, analyze student feedback on all four, and report on
the implementation of a student assignment on heuristics. This case study suggests ways
in which UCT can form an important nexus of professional skills and multiprofessional
collaboration
Museums as disseminators of niche knowledge: Universality in accessibility for all
Accessibility has faced several challenges within audiovisual translation Studies and gained great opportunities for its establishment as a methodologically and theoretically well-founded discipline. Initially conceived as a set of services and practices that provides access to audiovisual media content for persons with sensory impairment, today accessibility can be viewed as a concept involving more and more universality thanks to its contribution to the dissemination of audiovisual products on the topic of marginalisation. Against this theoretical backdrop, accessibility is scrutinised from the perspective of aesthetics of migration and minorities within the field of the visual arts in museum settings. These aesthetic narrative forms act as modalities that encourage the diffusion of ‘niche’ knowledge, where processes of translation and interpretation provide access to all knowledge as counter discourse. Within this framework, the ways in which language is used can be considered the beginning of a type of local grammar in English as lingua franca for interlingual translation and subtitling, both of which ensure access to knowledge for all citizens as a human rights principle and regardless of cultural and social differences. Accessibility is thus gaining momentum as an agent for the democratisation and transparency of information against media discourse distortions and oversimplifications
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