Applied Linguistics

Translation

Empirical and experimental research focusing on literary, legal, medical and audiovisual translation.

How is machine translation used to understand doctors’ instructions on how to take a particular medicine? Or how may gender bias and racial stereotypes be either reinforced or subverted in literary re-translations? These are just a few examples of the types of questions our research group addresses.

Starting from the theoretical foundations of Translation Studies, we try to answer questions relevant to professional translation practice and the language industry. Using a wide range of research methods (corpora, surveys, eye-tracking, keylogging, comparative case studies and close reading), we study translation in entertainment and culture as well as in health and business.

Research themes

• Machine translation in higher education and professional practice
• Machine translation in high-stakes contexts and its use by non-translators/linguists
• Medical translation aimed at experts and non-experts
• Metaphor translation across genres and modalities
• Gender bias and racial stereotypes in literary (re-)translation
• Dutch legal terminology in English
• Subtitling and language learning
• Reception of humour in translated poems for children

Putting research into practice

We actively integrate our research into our translator training and education. Students learn how to use translation technology in different domains of translation. At the same time, they also carry out their own independent research projects on the impact and implications of using this technology.