Situating translation expertise: A review with a sketch of a construct

This chapter outlines the prominent role of expertise research in the development of Translation Studies and discusses the nature of a situated translation and interpreting expertise (STIE) within cognitive, empirical approaches to translation and interpreting. STIE is envisioned as a multidimensional research construct where behaviors such as chuchotage, fansubbing, conference interpreting, literary translation, localization and the like may be described in terms of different demands in subsets of a fuzzy set of skills. Defining a specified set of representative translation and interpreting tasks seems to be a precondition to predicate existence of STIE, let alone degrees thereof. A three-layer taxonomy is proposed, focusing on task models, component subtasks, and cognitive processes. Finally, a construct for STIE is sketched, with five overlapping and interacting dimensions, envisioned as scopes onto a single but complex mental experience. The five dimensions are knowledge, adaptive psychophysiological traits, regulatory skills, problem-solving skills, and the self-concept. The self-concept dimension is then used to illustrate how construct dimensions might be operationalized through several intermediary sub-constructs, in this case into the minimal sub-dimensions of self awareness, situation awareness, and self-efficacy