This study creates a space for analysing an emerging translational activity, the practice
of translating written text into recorded signed language. With its non-prototypical
modality pair of source and target texts, the activity neither matches existing
conceptualisations of interpreting nor those of translation modes. In an ethnographic
case study I investigate the translational mode displayed, paying particular attention to
the translational process designed by the practitioner and the impact of source and
target text modalities. Drawing on literacy and multimodality research, this work reaffirms
that communication is embedded in social, cultural, historical and ideological
contexts and foregrounds the involved (human and non-human) agents. Data generated
through observation, interviews and analysis of source, target and preparatory
documents reveal an event influenced by the intrinsic properties of text modalities, the
translator’s socio-professional background, and socially constructed constraints and
opportunities. Developing concepts of “translational practice”, “translational events” and
“affordances”, I challenge the prototype-based dichotomy (translation/interpreting) used
to conceptualise translational activity. By negotiating data of a non-central practice with
theoretical concepts developed within Western Translation Studies, this research
contributes to enlarging and de-centralising the discipline. Thickly describing one
translational event, conceptualising written-signed translation practice and re-thinking
central translational concepts, this study highlights implications for theory, pedagogy
and the profession
