Christopher Mellinger

University of North Carolina at Charlotte | UNC Charlotte · Department of Languages and Culture Studies

Translation and interpreting studies is an interdisciplinary area of scholarly inquiry that has relied on a wide range of methodological approaches over the course of its development and evolution into an independent discipline. Early methods focused on linguistic and textual comparisons of the translated product or the interpreted rendition. Corpu...

Call for chapters for the 8th monograph in the Tibon series, published by Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Public Translation and Interpreting Studies: Goals, Paths, and Epistemologies. We invite chapter proposals that align with the following themes: 1. Models of public translation and interpreting studies; 2. Achieving social impact; 3....

Convocatoria de capítulos para el monográfico Estudios públicos de traducción e interpretación: Metas, sendas y epistemologías, publicado por la Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Esta convocatoria busca propuestas de capítulos en las siguientes esferas: 1. los modelos de estudios públicos de traducción e interpretación; 2. la consecución d...

Cuando la Modern Language Association (MLA 2007) alentó a centrarse en las aplicaciones prácticas de los estudios de idiomas, los educadores de idiomas se enfrentaron al reto de alinear, por un lado, los cursos que incluían un enfoque en clases de idiomas pedagógicamente sólidas basadas en el contenido y, por otro, una comprensión profunda de los d...

Psychometrics involves the indirect measurement of latent constructs, including aspects of cognition and emotion, and Likert-type scales are a common tool to operationalize and quantify these constructs. One threat to the psychometric properties of such scales is the administration of surveys across multiple languages, which presupposes the transla...

Socially driven research questions require a suite of theoretical and methodological approaches to understand the products, processes, and people involved in translation and interpreting (TI) activities in embedded and situated contexts. In some instances, these approaches are drawn from the field of sociology, while in others, the boundaries of so...

The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting and Cognition provides an overview of the interrelated nature of interpreting and cognition. The Handbook presents in-depth discussions of cognitive aspects of the task of interpreting and how researchers and practitioners alike have applied these findings to the practice of interpreting. With contributions fr...

This handbook presents a comprehensive overview of modern research on cognitive processes related to interpreting. Drawing from diverse disciplinary perspectives, the contributions examine the various cognitive processes involved in the interpreting task and their impact on the interpreting process in several contexts and applications. The handbook...

Apart from external factors and acquired skills, interpreting performance may be influenced by person-specific attributes and characteristics. This chapter presents an overview of research on individual differences in interpreting studies. The chapter opens with a discussion of research on individual differences more generally, followed by overview...

This chapter presents a historical overview of translation and interpreting process research, documenting early contributions to the field that have laid the foundation for more contemporary studies. The chapter takes a broad approach to historical inquiry in order to highlight the diverse range of global voices that have contributed to our underst...

This chapter examines hidden, inaccessible, and hard-to-reach data sources in language industry studies from an ethical and epistemological perspective. Drawing on examples from institutional translation and interpreting studies, the chapter first describes various types of data sources that are procured by researchers and institutions that could p...

In the United States, legal language services are shaped by both de jure and de facto standards, which encompass not only the professional profile of court interpreters but also the provision of legal translation and interpreting services. This article investigates the potential influence of ASTM and ISO standards on current language services imple...

While interpreting long remained unaffected by the technological progress that transformed the translation industry, recent years have witnessed a paradigm shift, such that interpreters increasingly interact with technological tools, that the delivery of interpreting services becomes increasingly dependent on technologies, and, finally, that techno...

This article describes a corpus-based approach to specialized interpreter training, advocating for the compilation and use of ad hoc corpora to support trainers when developing training materials for specific domains. To do so, this article presents a case study to illustrate the utility and the subsequent analysis of an ad hoc corpus for specializ...

Community translation and interpreting occur regularly in a variety of contexts when people who do not share a common language need to communicate. In the past several decades, scholars have taken a keen interest in understanding translator and interpreter cognition of bilinguals engaged in community translation and interpreting. A few terminologic...

This article presents a research-based proposal on how to integrate translation and interpreting into the business language classroom, focusing on both text-based and interactional approaches to language pedagogy in specialized domains. As a point of departure, the article first reviews the pedagogical possibilities of integrating translation and i...

This introduction presents an overview of the special issue of Revista Llengua i Dret / Journal of Language and Law on legal translation and interpreting (TI) in the technologized world. Although legal translation technologies are widely available and accepted in many specialized domains, their use in legal contexts has historically been limited by...

This article presents a case study of a Spanish-language newspaper, The Puerto-Rico Eagle, published in Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War in order to identify the various ways in which the practice of translation manifests and to what ends these translations are used. This inquiry seeks to reconcile two approaches to translation history –...

Previous studies on affective dimensions of interpreting suggest that the emotionally-charged conversations or complex topics encountered by interpreters in community settings may be stressful and emotionally taxing, leaving interpreters prone to vicarious trauma and retraumatization. The assumed psychological risk associated with these conditions...

This chapter presents an overview of both signed and spoken language interpreting, defining interpreting as a language mediation task as well as a product, a process, and a service. The three main modes of interpreting – simultaneous interpreting, consecutive interpreting, and sight translation – are defined with examples of when these different mo...

This is the introduction to the special issue on Language Policies for Social Justice. Using the ultimatum game as a lens through which to view resource allocation and language policies, the guest editors argue that dominant language communities are placed in an advantageous position to decide on the offer to be made to non-dominant language commun...

Mellinger, Christopher D. & Esther Monzó-Nebot, eds. 2022. “Language policies for social justice—Translation, interpreting, and access.” Special issue, Just. Language Rights & Minorities, Revista de Drets Lingüístics i Minories 1, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.7203/Just.1.1. - Monzó-Nebot, Esther & Christopher D. Mellinger. 2022. “Language policies for...

As corpus-based translation studies continues to expand, researchers have employed data analytic techniques from neighbouring disciplines, such as corpus linguistics, to explore a wider variety of research questions. The field has evolved from early frequency-based approaches to corpus-based translation studies to now include more advanced statisti...

This chapter reviews several of the challenges encountered by the U.S. Latinx community in relation to healthcare, focusing on healthcare disparities and inequalities related to language services, translation, and interpreting. First, language services that are offered to non-English-speaking patients will be presented as an initial step toward eli...

Digital pen technologies have enabled new forms of interpreting and provided new ways to train interpreting students in consecutive interpreting; however, digital pens also provide an opportunity to collect interpreting process data that can serve as a proxy for cognitive behavior. This article examines the extant literature on notetaking and cogni...

Renewed interest in research methods used in cognitive translation and interpreting studies (CTIS) has led to increased reflection on the nature of research and experimental design, internal and external validity, and the type and nature of experimental tasks. Of particular concern is the extent to which valid generalization can be made from empiri...

Public service interpreting courses regularly include skill-building exercises to help prepare students to work as professional interpreters. These courses, however, serve a diverse range of students who may have career goals that differ from those of prospective interpreters. Differentiated instruction and learning outcomes in these courses can he...

Data represent the foundation of the research endeavor and scholarly inquiry. In translation and interpreting studies (TIS), data are derived from a variety of sources, including text as data, survey responses, ethnographies, experiments, and observational research. Transdisciplinary approaches to TIS research continue to expand the types and sourc...

Quantitative research in Translation & Interpreting Studies often employs Likert-type scales to measure latent variables. Therefore, a rigorous research agenda demands the development of theoretically grounded scales to quantify unobservable traits or characteristics. Due to the mathematical underdetermination of factor analysis, the validity of th...

Drawing on literature from bilingual education, language brokering, and interpreting studies, this chapter details the range and scope of spoken language mediation and interpreting in the U.S. education system. How these services are provided and by whom is, in large part, shaped by the legal and regulatory framework of English language learning an...

The size and scope of multinational corporations in the globalized and interconnected modern economy has increased the need for language services to facilitate a broad range of cross-language communication. Much of the prior research on language in international business has emphasized a metaphorical language barrier and the concept of equivalence...

This chapter presents an overview of the current state of research ethics in translation and interpreting studies. The first section addresses theoretical considerations related to translation, language, and power, which inform contemporary discussions of ethics in the field. The issues raised include the prevalence of Western bias in dominant rese...

As translation and interpreting studies continue to develop cognitive theories of translator and interpreter behavior and processing, there has been increased emphasis on research methods and data collection methodologies to glean new insights into the translation process. This article presents a critical review of survey research methods in Cognit...

Research on public service interpreting employs a number of methods to examine a range of variables, from specific linguistic and paralinguistic variables to spatial positioning, agency, and ethics. These methods, however, require explicit recognition of the researcher’s positionality in order to ensure appropriate data analysis and interpretation...

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the key issues shaping the language industry, including translation, interpreting, machine translation, editing, terminology management, technology and accessibility. By exploring current and future research topics and methods, the Companion addresses language industry stakeholders, researchers, trai...

Research on technology-enabled and technology-mediated interpreting to date has taken a largely product-oriented approach to understand the role of technology during interpreting. In response to calls for additional empirical research on the intersection of interpreting, technology, and cognition, this article argues for the inclusion of process-or...

Recent studies indicate that heritage language speakers have professional opportunities in translation and interpreting (e.g., Carreira, 2014a) because of their unique linguistic and cultural background. In addition, heritage language speakers' unique background and previous experiences as language brokers or non-professional interpreters or transl...

This article adopts a meta-analytic research framework to examine the strength of the relationship between working memory and simultaneous interpreting. This quantitative analysis utilizes a random effects model to combine multiple studies in an examination of differences between professional interpreters and various comparison groups as well as th...

This article presents a microhistory of Puerto Rico that investigates the role of translation and language policy during the transition from Spanish to U.S. colonial rule. Two specific periods, namely the transitional military government from 1898 to 1900 and the first civilian government from 1900 to 1917, provide the framework within which the st...

Cognitive translation processes incorporate metacognitive activity due to the association with problem-solving behaviour, including the ability to recognize problems, propose solutions, and evaluate the effectiveness of solutions. Previous research has emphasized these aspects of the translation process in general texts; however, specialized transl...

The influence of technology on translation studies has been an established focus of Translation Studies research for decades. The technologization of the translation profession has wide-ranging effects, with some scholars considering technology to be “central to the definition of the translation activity” in many contexts rather than a newly-added...

Research on technology and interpreting regularly investigates technology-mediated interpreting settings and contrasts various interpreting configurations to better understand how technology changes the interpreting task. This scholarship generally does not account for various personality or character attributes exhibited by interpreters, nor does...

This article discusses problem-based learning (PBL) and its potential application to computer-assisted translation (CAT) pedagogy. Problem-based learning is situated in the CAT classroom as a final course component in which students challenge their previously-acquired knowledge and skill sets to solve unique, ill-defined problems that mirror those...

Context: Allied health care professionals commonly apply cryotherapy as treatment for acute musculoskeletal trauma and the associated symptoms. Understanding the impact of a tape barrier on intramuscular temperature can assist in determining treatment duration for effective cryotherapy. Objective: To determine whether Kinesio® Tape acts as a bar...

Editing and revision are regularly incorporated into professional translation projects as a means of quality assurance. Underlying the decision to include these tasks in translation workflows lay implicit assumptions about what constitutes quality. This article examines how quality is operationalized with respect to editing and revision and conside...

This study investigates how the order in which various translation memory match-types occur in a target language version of a text may influence translator behavior and cognition. Empirical research designs often attempt to mitigate for possible confounds from order effects, yet explicit recognition of the time-series nature of data collection can...

Perspectives on the interplay of translation, interpreting, and language studies regularly position these related fields in various stages of tension. Renewed interest in translation and interpreting may lead to their incorporation in language programs in an effort to provide cross-cultural and translingual skills for graduates. Such curricular cha...

Objective The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of 3 different elastic therapeutic taping methods on the subacromial joint space in healthy adults. Methods Pre-/post-test laboratory study method was used in this study. Forty-eight healthy adults with no prior history of shoulder injury or surgery and no history of dominant shoulder...

Graduates of translation programmes increasingly encounter machine translation in the language industry. In response to this identified market need, translation education programmes have begun to incorporate machine translation into the curriculum. In order for translation graduates to serve as professional post-editors in the language industry, th...

As the number of limited English proficiency speakers in the United States continues to increase, court administrators face mounting pressure to ensure that services are provided to linguistic minorities and that the availability and adequacy of these services meet this growing need and provide equal footing to non-English-speaking litigants. Sever...

Background: Limited quantitative, physiological evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of Kinesio® Taping methods, particularly with respect to the potential ability to impact underlying physiological joint space and structures. To better understand the impact of these techniques, the underlying physiological processes must be investigated in...

Quantitative Research Methods in Translation and Interpreting Studies encompasses all stages of the research process that include quantitative research methods, from conceptualization to reporting. In five parts, the authors cover: • sampling techniques, measurement, and survey design; • how to describe data; • how to analyze differences; • how to...

Reembedding Translation Process Research is a rich collection of empirical research papers investigating important new facets of the relationship between translation and cognition. The common thread running through the collection is the notion of “re-embedding” the acts of translating and interpreting—and the ways we understand them. That is, they...

Experimental research into cognitive processes in translation is often faulted for small sample sizes and the lack of generalisability of findings. Researchers face constraints when identifying and recruiting participants for studies, since the traditional site-bound laboratory imposes geographic limitations on who can potentially participate. Inte...