[Back]
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hanna Risku
Hanna Risku
T: +43-1-4277-58017
https://socotrans.univie.ac.at/

Current FWF research project: Rethinking translation expertise: a workplace study (Retrex, P33132)

The objective of this research project is to contribute to an understanding of how translation expertise is understood and constructed by working professionals. The project explores the lived translation expertise of working professionals, which is assumed to differ from the established perspectives of translation process research. To do so, the project views experts as social actors who construct expertise in interaction with other social actors and tools. Accordingly, the social, performative and situative aspects of expertise are placed in the foreground. The project investigates how translation expertise is socially constructed and rationalized in the workplace, which notions of expertise emerge and how these manifest themselves in day-to-day working life. This includes questions of possible contradictions between what people say they do and what they actually do, the strategic interests that underlie the expertise discourse and potential conflicts between different constructions of expertise. The empirical insights into the lived expertise of working professionals will offer new perspectives for translation studies and prove fruitful for theoretical reconceptualizations.

This research project takes the form of a translation workplace study and approaches the topic froma qualitative, ethnographic perspective. To capture the emic, insider perspective of the participants as closely as possible, the project uses an ethnographically oriented multi-case research design with a deep, multi-faceted analysis of a number of selected translation agencies. To grasp the different dimensions of lived expertise (actual workplace praxis, rationalizations of the social actors involved, normative descriptions), a combination of participant observations, interviews, focus groups and document analysis will be used to collect the data.

1 - 20 out of 130
Milosevic J, Risku H. Interpreting and Embodied Cognition. In Mellinger C, editor, Routledge Handbook of Interpreting and Cognition. Routledge. 2025
Risku H. Introduction. In Granado S, Bennett PM, Liu J, editors, Translation and Interpreting Processes: Extended Perspectives. Leuven University Press. 2025. (Translation, Interpreting and Mediation).
DePalma D, Faes F, Khalifa AW, Koskinen K, Orrego-Carmona D, Risku H et al. Roundtable: Reflecting on the past, present, and future of the translation industry. In Routledge Handbook of the Translation Industry. Routledge, Taylor & Francis. 2025
Rogl R, Risku H. Cognitive artefacts and boundary objects: On the changing role of tools in translation project management. In Winters M, Deane-Cox S, Böser U, editors, Translation, Interpreting and Technological Change: Innovations in Research, Practice and Training. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2024. p. 13-36. (Bloomsbury Advances in Translation).
Borg C, Heine C, Risku H. Observations and Diaries. In Rojo López AM, Muñoz Martín R, editors, Research Methods in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 2024
Risku H. Reflections on individualized and extended translator studies. In Kadric M, Kolb W, Pöllabauer S, editors, Translation als Gestaltung: Beiträge für Klaus Kaindl zur translatorischen Theorie und Praxis. Narr Francke Attempto. 2024. p. 65-74
Sannholm R, Risku H. Situated Minds and Distributed Systems in Translation: Exploring the Conceptual and Empirical Implications. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies. 2024.
Schlager D, Risku H. What does it take to be a good inhouse translator? Constructions of expertise in the workplace. JoSTrans: The Journal of Specialised Translation. 2024;42(42):2. doi: https://www.jostrans.org/article/view/5976/5183
Baumann A, Pasterk K, Risku H, Rogl R, Schlager D, Sourdille A. But what about the emic perspective? An ethnographic approach to investigating translation expertise. EST Newsletter. 2023.
Schlager D, Risku H. Contextualising Translation Expertise: Lived Practice and Social Construction. Translation, Cognition & Behavior. 2023;6(2):231–252.
Risku H, Schlager D. Epistemologies of Translation Expertise: Notions in Research and Praxis. In Marín García Á, Halverson S, editors, Contesting Epistemologies in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. 2022. p. 11-31. (Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies).
Risku H, Hirvonen M, Rogl R, Milosevic J. Ethnographic Research. In Zanettin F, Rundle C, editors, Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology. London: Routledge. 2022. 21
Risku H, Rogl R. Praxis and Process Meet Halfway: The Convergence of Sociological and Cognitive Approaches in Translation Studies. Translation & Interpreting: the international journal of translation and interpreting research. 2022;14(2):32-49. doi: 10.12807/ti.114202.2022.a03
Risku H. Maschinelles Übersetzen ist wie Tesla fahren. Ein Erfahrungsbericht 2021.
Risku H, Meinx B. Emotion and the social embeddedness of translation in the workplace. In Tra&Co, editor, Translation, Interpreting, Cognition. The Way out of the Box. Language Science Press. 2021. (Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing).
Risku H, Milosevic J, Rogl R. Responsibility, powerlessness and conflict: An ethnographic case study of boundary management in translation. In Carbonell i Cortés O, Monzó-Nebot E, editors, Translating Asymmetry – Rewriting Power. John Benjamins. 2021
Risku H, Rogl R. Translation and situated, embodied, distributed, embedded and extended cognition. In Jakobsen AL, Alves F, editors, Routledge Handbook of Translation and Cognition. Routledge. 2021. p. 478
Risku H. Wir lesen zwischen den Zeilen 2020.
Risku H. Cognitive Approaches to Translation. In Chapelle C, editor, The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. 2020. p. 192-203
Risku H, Rogl R, Milosevic J. Researching workplaces. In Angelone E, Ehrensberger-Dow M, Massey G, editors, The Bloomsbury Companion to Language Industry Studies. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2020. p. 37-62
1 - 20 out of 130

Department for Translation Studies

Gymnasiumstraße 50
1190 Wien
Room: N2.18

T: +43-1-4277-58017

hanna.risku@univie.ac.at