The Neurocognition of Translation and Interpreting

Abstract

This groundbreaking work offers a comprehensive account of brain-based research on translation and interpreting. First, the volume introduces the methodological and conceptual pillars of psychobiological approaches vis-à-vis those of other cognitive frameworks. Next, it systematizes neuropsychological, neuroscientific, and behavioral evidence on key topics, including the lateralization of networks subserving cross-linguistic processes; their relation with other linguistic mechanisms; the functional organization and temporal dynamics of the circuits engaged by different translation directions, processing levels, and source-language units; the system’s susceptibility to training-induced plasticity; and the outward correlates of its main operations. Lastly, the book discusses the field’s accomplishments, strengths, weaknesses, and requirements. Its authoritative yet picturesque, didactic style renders it accessible to researchers in cognitive translatology, bilingualism, and neurolinguistics, as well as teachers and practitioners in related areas. Succinctly, this piece establishes a much-needed platform for translation and interpreting studies to fruitfully interact with cognitive neuroscience.

Semantic and attentional networks in bilingual processing: fMRI connectivity signatures of translation directionality

“…The relevance of FC metrics to capture differences between both translation directions is reinforced by the results of the regional activation analyses, which failed to discriminate between L1R and L2R and, more crucially, between BT and FT (even when these were controlled for their respective baseline reading conditions). Such null results reinforce the view that FC approaches can reveal significant differences between BT and FT even when both conditions are not discriminated via univariate approximations -which further attests for the need to include cross-regional integration approaches in the agenda of brain-based translation research (García, 2019) and cognitive neuroscience at large (Mišić & Sporns, 2016). Interestingly, however, results from the left IFG seed revealed no FC differences between BT and FT. A possible reason behind these null effects concerns the putative role that this region plays in morphosyntactic processing (Ullman, 2001b;Zaccarella & Friederici, 2016).…”

“…However, this approach also carries potential interpretive limitations, especially because the observed differences may be driven by either interlingual reformulation proper or by articulatory discrepancies between L1 and L2 production. In this sense, future neurocognitive research on directionality should contemplate novel control tasks capable of teasing apart the modulations underlying each of those sub-stages during the translation process (García, 2019).…”

A critical review of the research on Translation Psychology: Theoretical and methodological approaches

“…Further development of the cognitive exploration of translation and interpreting has also been witnessed in more recent publications by Carl et al (2016), Ferreira and Schwieter (2015), García (2019), Göpferich et al (2011), Mees et al (2009), Rojo and Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2013) and Schwieter and Ferreira (2017), among others. Focusing on theoretical advances and methodological innovation, they have presented the increasing diversity and ever-deepening exploration of various cognitive aspects of translation and interpreting: cognitivepsychological, psycholinguistic, neurocognitive and cognitive-linguistic explorations.…”

Translating Time: Modelling the (Re)Processing of Emerging Meaning

“…Implications and prospects an elementary, perhaps even trivial, implication of this kind of modeling is that it allows us to see translation as a process. up to now, we could imagine translation as a process, we could perhaps see parts of the brain light up one after the other in a brain process (Garcia, 2019), we could theorize translation as a social process (chesterman, 2015), but we could not see it. So, a model like this is a cognitive toolaccording to the extended-mind hypothesis (clark & chalmers, 1998)-to help us better understand translation, and adding a four-dimensional visual tool should help, if only in classrooms.…”

“…Secondly, sociological approaches to translation had to think about the social process of which translation practices are part (chesterman 2015; tyulenev 2014; van rooyen 2019; wolf 2011; 2012). thirdly, and most recently, neurological approaches have been trying to understand the brain processes involved in translation (Garcia 2019; tymoczko 2012). However, there seem to be only a few scholars who link translation studies to process philosophy (basalamah 2018; blumczynski 2016) or entropy and the Second law of thermodynamics (cronin 2017; marais 2019) to consider the position of translation in a process ontology, rather than localized processes in a substantialist ontology.…”