Panel 1: Audiovisual Translation in the Periphery of Translation Studies: Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities (Sara Ramos Pinto, Yves Gambier)

Discussion Panel

Despite the growing interest in the last two decades, audiovisual translation (AVT) can still be said to be a peripheral area of study within Translation Studies. One of the implications of this situation is that none of the theoretical approaches, and corresponding methodologies, was developed with a multimedia text in mind. This can be challenging to the scholar faced with the need to adapt a methodology to a type of text for which that methodology was not designed. However, this peripheral condition can also be seen as facilitating the contact with other disciplines, approaches and methodologies. The multimodal approach could, for example, be seen in this light. An approach developed in another area and brought to translation studies through audiovisual translation as an attempt to deal with the complexity of the multimedia product. Multimedia products, by their own nature, seem to claim for a multidisciplinary approach, and being in the periphery could thus be a privileged place for that multidisciplinary to foster.

Bearing this in mind, with this panel we wish to bring for discussion the following aspects:

  • How have core approaches such as descriptive translation studies or polysystem studies been ‘imported’ to the study of AVT? What challenges do scholars face when working with such approaches within AVT? How has the use of “imported methodologies” biased the research on audiovisual translation?
  • What other approaches have been brought into this interdisciplinary dialogue promoted within audiovisual translation? How do these new methodologies better serve the research in audiovisual translation, and what can they bring to the core areas of study?
  • Dissemination ???
We envisage this panel not as a set of connected individual presentations, but as an open discussion instead. After a short introduction by the moderators, who would guide the discussion through a set of questions previously made available to the speakers and the audience, the discussion would be open to a group of invited speakers including Carol O'Sullivan, Christopher Taylor, Alexandra Assis Rosa, Josélia Neves and Aline Remael. Having worked in different areas from action research to multimodality, descriptive studies, gender studies, accessibility and reception, we believe this discussion will be an important contribution to the discussion of theoretical and methodological challenges felt with AVT.