Finding synergies in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies via task design

Álvaro Marín García
University of Granada

Traditionally, Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies (CTIS) scholars have approached Multilectal Mediated Communication (MMC) tasks separately, partly due to methodological reasons, partly due to the tendency, identified by Blumczynski and Hassani (2019) in the wider field of Translation Studies (TS), to conceptualize language mediation according to discrete, absolute categories, often opposed in dichotomies (interpreting/translation, source text/target text, oral/written). However, actual instances of MMC are complex and entail many dimensions that frequently overlap across tasks and relate to each other in multifarious ways (Marais 2014). While dichotomous epistemologies favor the isolation of tasks and limit the scope of application of methods and constructs, complexity epistemologies cater for the diversity of linguistic, social, and environmental variables, and their impact on each other (Marín 2023). Such an epistemic stance allows us to identify theoretical synergies, developing constructs and models to empirically investigate different aspects of tasks both individually and in relation to each other to inform a general cognitive theory of MMC. In this article, I revisit the translation task model (Marín 2021) as a construct that could be instrumental to describe mediators’ interaction with the task from an extended perspective. In order to do so, the notion of ‘constraint’ is introduced and further explained according to Baggs and Chemero’s distinction between habitat and umwelt (2018). I argue that empirical data can be described according to these categories and, in turn, the resulting descriptions applied to the development of a general theory of MMC.

Publication history

Date received: 16 August 2023

Date accepted: 8 November 2024

Published online: 13 June 2025

Table of contents

In their introduction to the collected volume Multilingual Mediated Communication and Cognition (2020), Halverson and Muñoz discuss how instances of interlingual mediation traditionally investigated in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies (CTIS) have evolved and diversified into often overlapping practices: translation, pre- and post-editing, interpreting in its many forms, and so forth. The authors point to technological advances as one of the drivers of change in those practices that have dramatically reshaped the understanding of translation. These changes and differences often escape folk notions of translation and interpreting. The authors mention how it is still hard for lay public to differentiate translation from interpreting and argue that when delineating our object of study, which manifests as social events (2020, 2), we need to recognize this grouping based on ‘family resemblances’ across practices of language mediation. To do so, they propose the term Multilectal Mediated Communication (MMC) as a generic label encompassing these forms of communication ([multimodal, sight] translation, [dialogue, onsite, distance] interpreting, paraphrasing, summarizing, etc.) that do not always exhibit clear boundaries.

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