Supporting the learning of deaf students in higher education: a case study at Sheffield Hallam University

This article is an examination of the issues surrounding support for the learning of deaf students in higher education (HE). There are an increasing number of deaf students attending HE institutes, and as such provision of support mechanisms for these students is not only necessary but essential. Deaf students are similar to their hearing peers, in that they will approach their learning and require differing levels of support dependant upon the individual. They will, however, require a different kind of support, which can be technical or human resource based. This article examines the issues that surround supporting deaf students in HE with use of a case study of provision at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), during the academic year 1994-95. It is evident that by considering the needs of deaf students and making changes to our teaching practices that all students can benefit

Post-editing:A Genealogical Perspective on Translation Practice

This paper develops a practice-theoretical conceptualization of post-editing, as an activity that increasingly forms part of translation practice. This contrasts with a prevailing conceptualization of post-editing as a practice in its own right, competing with or complementing translation practice. Adopting a genealogical perspective, I trace this particular evolution of the translation practice through some of the interdependent changes in the materials constituting the practice, the competences or know-how that transpire in the practice, and the meanings of the practice, in particular as constructed through the discourse of language service providers and the international standards that normatively regulate the practice. The paper concludes with some implications of this practice-theoretical approach for future research on post-editing

Text and Context:Essays on Translation and Interpreting in Honour of Ian Mason

Ian Mason has been a towering presence in the now flourishing discipline of translation studies since its inception, and has produced some of the most influential and detailed analyses of translated text and interpreted interaction to date. The sophistication, dynamism and inclusiveness that have characterized his approach to all forms of mediation are the hallmarks of his legacy.Text and Context celebrates Ian Mason's scholarship by bringing together fourteen innovative and original pieces of research by both young and established scholars, who examine different forms of translation and interpreting in a variety of cultural and geographical settings. In line with his own inclusive approach to the field, these contributions combine close textual analysis with keen attention to issues of power, modes of socialization, institutional culture, individual agency and ethical accountability. While paying tribute to one of the most innovative and influential scholars in the field, the volume offers novel insights into a variety of genres and practices and charts important new directions for the discipline

Translating Cultures of Science

This essay focuses on conceptualisations of science as culture, drawing primarily on research from the field of science and technology studies. It first highlights differences between traditional, Western positivist views of science and more culturally oriented, constructivist perspectives. In doing so, it introduces a conceptualisation of culture that is closely bound up with notions of knowledge-as-practice. It then illustrates how the concept of epistemic cultures can help us to understand how different branches of science are culturally distinct. This is followed by an outline of postcolonial science studies, used as an example to illustrate the kinds of issues that can be addressed when we construe science as culture in global settings. The essay then outlines one way in which scientific discourses construct science, using exclusionary boundaries. These discussions of science are followed by an overview of current trends in research on translating science. Like science studies, translation studies is shifting its attention away from a focus on science as knowledge and scientific discourse as referential and towards a better understanding of the social and cultural importance of scientific translation. The essay concludes by outlining the scope for further research on scientific translation from cultural perspectives

Sociological Approaches to Translation Technology

While translation studies has become increasingly sociological in its methodological and conceptual focus, translation technology is only rarely at the forefront of such studies. This essay looks beyond Bourdieusian approaches to translation in fields of literary production to draw conceptual inspiration from the sociology of technology. By introducing key notions from the social construction of technology, and key concerns of recent studies on translation technologies, the essay identifies a potential trajectory for future sociological research on translation technology. As in other areas of social life, our understanding could be significantly enhanced by examining how translation technologies are inscribed with hegemonic values and by analyzing the socio-economic and political conditions and configurations that bring about the technologies and normalize them. The widespread deployment of machine translation technology also requires us to examine the contexts of translation technology design and use, in professional workplaces of translators but also beyond them. An emerging sociology of translation technology may, in turn, lead to revisions of traditional conceptualizations of translation, to account for the material, embodied and collective dimensions of both translation and technology, as well for their construction, meanings and impacts in specific cultural and socio-economic contexts

Scientific translation

Addressing research questions and issues relevant to scientific translation requires reflection ontwo key concepts, science and translation. The concept of translation is critically examined in avariety of ways by translation scholars who seek greater understanding of the place oftranslation in the world. The concept of science, no less complex, receives abundant criticalexamination in a different body of scholarship. The overlapping fields of science studies, scienceand technology studies (STS), and science, technology and society (also STS) are concerned withgreater understanding of the place of science in the world. Both science studies and translationstudies are inherently interdisciplinary and employ a wide range of theoretical and empiricalapproaches to address historical, philosophical, social, cultural and political questions. Ourunderstanding of the place of scientific translation in the world may therefore benefit greatlyfrom scholarship at the confluence of these two disciplines

Technology, translation

Critical engagement with the role of technologies in translation has been slow in emergingwithin translation studies but has been gathering pace since the second decade of thiscentury. As translation becomes more fully understood as social practice and is increasinglystudied through sociological lenses, the materials and tools involved in that practice are alsobeginning to come to the fore. The practice of translating, like writing, has always involvedtechnologies, and those technologies have emerged and evolved over time in relation to asociety’s cultural and socioeconomic needs. Gabrial (2008) traces the development ofmanual, mechanical and electric/electronic writing technologies, from stone inscriptions toink quills on parchment, from printing presses to typewriters, from Morse code to desktoppublishing. Many of these developments depended, in turn, on other technologies,including paper production, universal postal systems, the personal computer and theinternet. Much of the history of translation technologies could be narrated along similarlines. However, when translation technologies are discussed by translation scholars, thefocus tends to be limited to digital technologies and, even more specifically, to translationmemory (TM) and machine translation (MT) software. For instance, Chan’s (2015) overviewof the history of translation technology starts in 1967. Other narratives typically begin in the1950s, with the development of machine translation systems (Hutchins 2015). A notableexception is Cronin’s (2013) Translation in the Digital Age, one of the few examples ofscholarship that engages profoundly with notions of technology and translation throughtheir long histories, into present-day contexts and beyond