Situated minds and distributed systems in translation: Exploring the conceptual and empirical implications
Abstract
This article sheds light on two different perspectives on the boundaries of the cognitive system and the consequences of their adoption for Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies (CTIS). Both are represented by different approaches within the cognitive scientific cluster of approaches referred to as situated or 4EA (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended, and affective) cognition. The first, the person-centred perspective, takes individuals as a starting point and describes their interactions with their social and material surroundings. The second, the distributed, extended perspective, takes the joint activity of different situated actors and material artefacts as its starting point and depicts this socio-cognitive unit as the object of analysis. With this article, we do not seek to advocate the use of one over the other. Rather, we attempt to offer a coherent interpretation of how the cognitive process of translation can be studied and interpreted as a situated activity either from the perspective of individual actors or from a larger, distributed, and extended angle that considers people and the relevant social and material environment as a system. Specifically, we discuss what is to be gained if translation is studied from a distributed cognitive perspective. To this end, we illustrate key aspects of the discussion using empirical examples from current field research in which both an individual and a distributed perspective are applied to analyse interaction in a translation workplace.
Keywords:
Publication history
1.Introduction
Key assumptions connected to cognitive scientific approaches within the situated or 4EA paradigm (embodied, embedded,
enactive, extended, and affective cognition) have gained considerable ground in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies (CTIS)
in recent years (Risku 2002Risku, Hanna 2002 “Situatedness
in Translation Studies.” Cognitive Systems
Research 3 (3): 523–533. , 2010 2010 “A
Cognitive Scientific View on Technical Communication and Translation: Do Embodiment and Situatedness Really Make a
Difference?” Target 22 (1): 94–111.
; Muñoz 2010Muñoz
Martín, Ricardo 2010 “On
Paradigms and Cognitive Translatology.” In Translation and
Cognition, edited by Gregory Shreve and Erik Angelone, 169–187. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
; Ehrensberger-Dow and Massey 2019Ehrensberger-Dow, Maureen, and Gary Massey 2019 “Socio-Technical
Issues in Professional Translation Practice.” In Translation Practice
in the Field: Current Research on Socio-Cognitive Processes, edited by Hanna Risku, Regina Rogl, and Jelena Milosevic, 105–122. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
;
Risku and Rogl 2021Risku, Hanna, and Regina Rogl 2021 “Translation
and Situated, Embodied, Distributed, Embedded, and Extended
Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Cognition, edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt
Lykke Jakobsen, 478–499. Abingdon: Routledge.
). Attention to the 4EA aspects of cognition has provided conceptual
and methodological innovations for understanding and researching translation and interpreting (T&I). T&I scholars are
increasingly paying attention to the situative embeddedness of cognition and the role of physical and social environments.
The commonalities between the 4EA approaches can mask their differences and lead us to simply lump them all together. For example, they all assume that cognition is situated, so that the term ‘situated’ can be used in a generic sense to refer to the whole 4EA cluster. However, when taken as a foundation for concrete research projects and applied therein, several key decisions will need to be made regarding the research design for which the approaches might actually produce very different answers.
The different approaches within the situated or 4EA cluster have been grouped, categorised, and interpreted in various ways.
In this article, we follow Robbins and Aydede’s (2009Robbins, Philip, and Murat Aydede 2009 “A
Short Primer on Situated Cognition.” In The Cambridge Handbook of
Situated Cognition, edited by Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede, 3–10. New
York: Cambridge University Press., 3) classification with “situated
cognition [as] the genus, and embodied, enactive, embedded, and distributed cognition and their ilk [as] species.” We do not endeavour
to provide a full account of any of these approaches but simply to shed light on two different perspectives regarding the boundaries
of the cognitive system, the way activities are structured, the role of artefacts and representations, and the consequences of their
adoption for CTIS. Both perspectives are represented by different approaches in the 4EA cluster. The first, the individual or
person-centred perspective, takes individuals as a starting point and describes their interactions with their social and material
surroundings (see, e.g., Clark 1997Clark, Andy 1997 Being
There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together
Again. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
; Suchman
2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
; Robbins and Aydede 2009Robbins, Philip, and Murat Aydede 2009 “A
Short Primer on Situated Cognition.” In The Cambridge Handbook of
Situated Cognition, edited by Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede, 3–10. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
). Other people and tools are considered but looked
at from the perspective of the (activities of the) individual being studied. The second, the systemic or distributed perspective,
takes the joint activity of different situated actors and material artefacts as its starting point and depicts this whole
socio-cognitive unit as the object of analysis. We refer to this second perspective as the distributed cognition or DC perspective
(see, e.g., Hutchins 1995aHutchins, Edwin 1995a Cognition
in the Wild. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
, 1995b 1995b “How
a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds.” Cognitive
Science 19 (3): 265–288.
, 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 2011 2011 “Enculturating
the Supersized Mind.” Philosophical
Studies 152: 437–446.
; Hollan, Hutchins, and Kirsh 2000Hollan, James, Edwin Hutchins, and David Kirsh 2000 “Distributed
Cognition: Towards a New Foundation for Human-Computer Interaction Research.” ACM Transactions
on Computer-Human
Interaction 7 (2): 174–196.
; Rogers 2006Rogers, Yvonne 2006 “Distributed
Cognition and Communication.” In The Encyclopedia of Language and
Linguistics, 2nd ed., edited by Keith Brown, 731–733. Oxford: Elsevier.
). Here, individuals still matter,
but the emphasis is on the socio-cognitive, systemic, and group level: the cognitive effects of their interactions are assumed to add
up to something more than the contributions of each actor alone. We investigate what can be gained in CTIS by this elevation of the
empirical research object to the social or organisational level and, in consequence, also by the expansion of the timeframe analysed
to include long-term cooperation and the establishment of practices. Both perspectives are well established in theoretical and
methodological terms within the situated, 4EA paradigm and although they concur on important orientations regarding cognition, it is
important to explore and uncover what (if anything) is to be gained by taking the systemic, DC perspective as a methodological
approach in empirical CTIS.
Expanding on the efforts to nuance the differences between the different situated perspectives in Risku and Rogl (2021)Risku, Hanna, and Regina Rogl 2021 “Translation
and Situated, Embodied, Distributed, Embedded, and Extended
Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Cognition, edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt
Lykke Jakobsen, 478–499. Abingdon: Routledge., we thus seek to explain the individual and the distributed starting points in greater
detail and examine the implications of their use in CTIS. We do not, however, advocate the use of one over the other. In fact, we
consider both perspectives to be highly useful for constructing theoretically informed understandings of cognition in real-life
translation settings and encourage their continued use and further refinement in CTIS.
This article is divided into three parts. In the first (Sections 2 and 3), we describe the similarities and differences between the individual, person-centred and the distributed, extended perspectives. We then go on in the second part to summarise research in CTIS that uses these perspectives (Section 4). In the third, we illustrate key aspects of the discussion using empirical examples from current field research in which both a person-centred and a DC perspective are applied to analyse data on activities in a translation workplace (Section 5; Sannholm 2021Sannholm, Raphael 2021 Translation, Teamwork, and Technology: The Use of Social and Material Scaffolds in the Translation Process. PhD diss. Stockholm University.).
2.Similarities: Birds of a feather
We would like to begin by describing the common features of the approaches within the situated, 4EA cluster and thus the similarities between the individual, person-oriented and the DC perspectives. Their shared tenets can be found in their development (i.e., when and where they were introduced, the motivation for their introduction, their disciplinary roots); their emphasis on social, cultural, and embodied aspects in cognition; and their basic approaches to data acquisition and analysis.
The situated, 4EA paradigm emerged from different disciplinary developments in the 1980s and was established as a cluster of
cognitive scientific orientations in the 1990s. The approaches within this cluster criticise disembodied, decontextualised,
propositional theories of the mind and offer an alternative, situatively, culturally, and historically embedded view of cognition.
They “move away from a description of action which finds its roots in an abstract logical structure of statements” (Groleau 2002Groleau, Carole 2002 “Structuration,
Situated Action and Distributed Cognition: Rethinking the Computerization of
Organizations.” Systèmes d’Information et
Management 7 (2). https://aisel.aisnet.org/sim/vol7/iss2/2, 18). With their common emphasis on embeddedness and embodiment, they stress the
role of the social and material worlds and the fact that human cognition leans and depends on the structures in the environment and
relies strongly on the manipulation of objects. Indeed, the emphasis on social interaction and tool use is a characteristic feature of
the whole situated, 4EA cluster, even though the approaches partly zoom in on different phenomena, concentrate on tackling different
challenges (such as affects, bodies, the world, or societies; see Thagard 2005Thagard, Paul 2005 Mind:
Introduction to Cognitive Science. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: MIT
Press.), and study
cognition from different empirical perspectives. In this regard, Hutchins (2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 376) notes
that “cultural practices are as much a part of the story of cognitive evolution as are changes in brain structure,” while Suchman
(2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
, 52) explains that
human activity invariably occurs in circumstances that include more and less long-standing, obdurate, and compelling layers of culturally and historically constituted, social and material conditions. However familiar and constraining, though, the significance of those conditions, and their relevance for what is happening here and now, must be actively reenacted by participants in ways not fully specified in advance or in any strongly determinate way.
Social interaction and its cultural traces are thus seen as parts and co-determinants of the cognitive process. The same applies to the body: cognitive processes depend on and are shaped by bodily structures, possibilities, and constraints. Even our understanding of abstract concepts is moulded by our physical interactions with the world, including our specific abilities to perceive, move, and manipulate objects. This way, creating relatively stable spatial, material, immaterial, and social structures and bodily routines provides a consistency that supports the dynamic and situated cognitive activity.
One of the roots of the situated approaches can be traced back to the constructivism of Vygotsky (1986)Vygotsky, Lev
S. 1986 Thought and
Language. Cambridge: MIT
Press. and Luria (1966Luria, Alexander
M. 1966 Higher Cortical Functions in
Man. New York: Basic
Books.
, in Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 378), which stressed the social origins of the mind and the role of social support in learning
(conceptualised as the ‘zone of proximal development’ between individual learning and learning with the support of someone who already
has mastery of the activity). Furthermore, the situated approaches refer to Vygotsky’s and Luria’s way of understanding the nature of
artefacts as facilitators of cognitive processes.
It is important to stress that the different approaches within the situated, 4EA cluster do not describe specific
kinds of cognition. For instance, they do not assume that we think and act in an embodied way in specific
situations and then shift to a distributed or affective way of thinking and acting in others. Rather, they are approaches to the study
of all cognition (see also Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge., 376); the idea is that all thinking in all
situations is embedded, embodied, enacted, extended, and affective. We cannot turn off the embodied or affective dimension of
cognition, no matter how independently of any bodily constraints or affective influences we would like to reason. Similarly, the idea
behind distributed and extended cognitive processes is not that cognition becomes distributed or extended only, for example, in
situations of increased technology use. Instead, cognitive processes are distributed and extended from the outset – in nurseries,
Neanderthal caves, and modern offices alike. An individual sitting daydreaming alone on a park bench with their eyes closed could be
understood and studied from any of the perspectives. An individual working with others and alone, with and without tools, can be
described as a situated cognitive system. In a non-trivial sense, in all these cases, cognition is situated in the world and spread
through time. It proceeds in culturally constructed and social surroundings that have moulded the mental and environmental elements
involved. As Hutchins (2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 377) notes, “distributed cognition sees real-world cognition
as a process that involves the interaction of the consequences of past experience (for individual, group, and material world) with the
affordances of the present.”
3.Differences: Expanding the view
As the similarities between the members of the 4EA family already seem to be well known in CTIS (Muñoz 2021 2021 “Situated
Cognition.” In Handbook of Translation Studies
Online, Volume 5, edited
by Yves Gambier and Luc
van Doorslaer, 207–212. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. ; Risku and Rogl 2021Risku, Hanna, and Regina Rogl 2021 “Translation
and Situated, Embodied, Distributed, Embedded, and Extended
Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Cognition, edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt
Lykke Jakobsen, 478–499. Abingdon: Routledge.
), we will concentrate more closely
here on the contribution that a systemic, DC perspective can make to CTIS in describing cognitive processes on the group,
organisational, and social levels – an aspect which has so far been paid less attention. Below, we describe the difference that this
shift in perspective can make in relation to the boundaries of the unit of analysis (Section 3.1), the way the activity is structured (Section 3.2), the role of
artefacts (Section 3.3), and the role of representations (Section 3.4). In the following section, we will discuss the respective view of these topics first from the common situated
or 4EA perspective and then from the DC perspective.
3.1Boundaries of the unit of analysis
According to the situated, 4EA paradigm, cognitive processes are embedded in and dependent on their contexts and
cultures. Their significance can only be explained and understood as part of that situation and culture – they mean what they mean
due to their role in the situated activity and cultural practice (see Robbins and Aydede
2009Robbins, Philip, and Murat Aydede 2009 “A
Short Primer on Situated Cognition.” In The Cambridge Handbook of
Situated Cognition, edited by Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede, 3–10. New
York: Cambridge University Press.). Suchman (2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
, 23) understands being human “as an unfolding, shifting
biography of culturally specific experience and relations, inflected for each of us in uniquely particular ways.” However, within
the situated, 4EA cluster, the boundaries of the unit of analysis can be defined differently. Studies investigating cognitive
processes from an individual perspective look at cognition from the perspective of individual actors and study how they utilise,
produce, and interact with elements in their material and social environments. In the case of translation, they would, for
example, look at how translators use certain tools, how translators are affected by their social setting, or how the resources
available or social interactions in the situation affect the translation process.
From a DC perspective, in contrast, cognition is taken to be distributed across actors, objects, and the environment
(i.e., [potentially multiple] agents and the material world). The cognitive process is not carried out solely by the individuals
but by the cognitive system of actors, artefacts, and other objects in their present environment. This stance should not be
misinterpreted as a disengagement with individual actors: Hollan, Hutchins, and Kirsh (2000Hollan, James, Edwin Hutchins, and David Kirsh 2000 “Distributed
Cognition: Towards a New Foundation for Human-Computer Interaction Research.” ACM Transactions
on Computer-Human
Interaction 7 (2): 174–196. , 179) maintain that the “ethnography of distributed cognitive systems retains an interest in individual minds,
but adds to that a focus on the material and social means of the construction of action and meaning.” However, the “system of
brains, bodies, and shared environments for action in interaction” (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 376)
or the “brain-body-world system” (389) on a social, organisational, or group level is seen as the unit that remembers and acts.
All its components contribute to the dynamics of the heterogeneous cognitive system, and these dynamics include short- and
long-time developments at a particular time and through time – from momentary reactions and
interactions to social, organisational, or group history. As Groleau (2002Groleau, Carole 2002 “Structuration,
Situated Action and Distributed Cognition: Rethinking the Computerization of
Organizations.” Systèmes d’Information et
Management 7 (2). https://aisel.aisnet.org/sim/vol7/iss2/2, 18) rather
metaphorically and semiotically puts it, Hutchins dissolves “the boundaries of the human body to conceptualize cognition as a
series of interactions among media located inside and outside the individual’s skin” so that a larger socio-technical unit like an
airplane cockpit or a cargo ship can be studied as a cognitive system. According to DC, a complete understanding of internal
mental processes would not suffice to explain how remembering works in real-life situations of action (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 378). From the DC perspective, remembering builds on the whole system as actors and
artefacts both resort to the traces of previous activities and create traces for future use for all the actors and artefacts in
the system. The DC perspective offers a way to expand the unit and timeframe of analysis in our empirical research and thus
enables us, for example, to understand the system-level, socio-cognitive dynamics of remembering. The “boundary around the person”
becomes “permeable” (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 388).
The DC approach also stresses that the “distribution of cognitive labor can give rise to supraindividual cognitive
effects,” in other words, “cognitive properties that are distinct from the cognitive properties of the individuals who compose the
group” (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge., 377). In research on translation, it would focus, for example,
on how translation agencies (with their project managers, in-house and freelance translators, revisers, clients, language
technology tools, and other technical and communication resources) translate texts; how texts emerge as products of the publisher,
its networks, guidelines, and processes; and how technological infrastructures and human contributors in digital translation
platforms produce translations. These examples of complex networks as cognitive units are not specific to translation or the
language industry but rather just examples of tight webs of interrelationships that are “typical of real-world cognitive
ecologies” (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 390).
To summarise, the choice of objects for empirical study differs depending on the perspective taken. Studies of T&I
processes from an individual, person-oriented cognitive perspective concentrate on the influence of the local, immediate context
of action on the cognitive processes (in the respective individuals), whereas studies looking at T&I processes from a DC
perspective choose a social network, a workplace (e.g., an agency, a language department, an office, a hospital unit, a court), or
some other larger unit as their empirical setting and analyse the joint dynamics of, and interactions within, this overall system.
We do not, however, picture or claim this to be an ideal or idyllic world: just like all cooperation is prone to conflict, the
coupled or joint activities in such larger units are not without frictions, asymmetries, and inequalities between humans and
between humans and things (see Ehrensberger-Dow and O’Brien 2015Ehrensberger-Dow, Maureen, and Sharon O’Brien 2015 “Ergonomics
of the Translation Workplace: Potential for Cognitive Friction.” Translation
Spaces 4 (1): 98–118. ). Neither do we
envision a dystopia in which individuals have no choice but to subordinate themselves totally to the overall system (though we are
aware that social systems like this are a real threat, also in the language industry; see Fırat 2021Fırat, Gökhan 2021 “Uberization
of Translation: Impacts on Working Conditions.” The Journal of Internationalization and
Localization 8 (1): 48–75.
). On the contrary, DC should not be understood as obscuring or ignoring the individual actors and their
agency but as a means of approaching the cognitive aspects of interaction between human actors, between human actors and material
artefacts, and between the past and the present, on the systemic and collective levels (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
).
3.2Structuration of activity
The situated, 4EA approaches share a critical view of predetermined plans and goals and common rules and agreements
that are supposed to be valid independent of the context. As Groleau (2002Groleau, Carole 2002 “Structuration,
Situated Action and Distributed Cognition: Rethinking the Computerization of
Organizations.” Systèmes d’Information et
Management 7 (2). https://aisel.aisnet.org/sim/vol7/iss2/2, 17) notes,
“the intelligibility of action stems from the link between action and context, and not from shared conventions.” Plans and
schemata do not steer cognition directly (‘online’, peri-actionally) but provide a possibility for ‘offline’ cognition – to plan
an action in advance (pre-actionally) and to explain an action afterwards (post-actionally). Goals and plans thus only help to
form and understand the action beforehand and afterwards but do not determine and structure the action itself (Suchman 2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press., 13).
For Suchman (2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press., 13), putting plans (schemes, scripts, etc.) in the
centre of our explanation of cognition is a deeply cultural phenomenon:
A central feature of planning […] is that it is among the many everyday practices that we, as participants in Euro-American cultural traditions at least, call out as a foundation of the rationality of our actions. The planned character of our actions is not, in this sense, inherent but is demonstrably achieved.
For observers/others watching from a distance, the activity might seem planned and appear to follow an a priori charted course, but the cognitive process itself is situated and contingent, depending on the cues and resources in the specific context.
Apart from the common situated orientation within the 4EA approaches, we can, again, distinguish different
perspectives on the forces that structure intelligent activity. From the individual, person-centred perspective, the respective
cogniser navigates in their present environment, depending on the cues and resources it provides. From the distributed
perspective, pre-actional plans and post-actional explanations can be positioned on the system level. The socio-cognitive system
of actors, objects, and their environment as a whole seems from a distance to act in a goal-oriented way, as the system follows
its situated and contingent dynamics, adapts to changes, and is transformed by new elements. The heterogeneous elements in this
system all contribute to its activity and dynamics. In activities that involve several actors, “features of a shared task world
can contribute to the establishment and maintenance of common ground” (Hutchins
2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge., 385). Through repeated interactions and conversations, team members, for example, contribute to an understanding of
the situation “superseding any prior individual understanding” (Groleau 2002Groleau, Carole 2002 “Structuration,
Situated Action and Distributed Cognition: Rethinking the Computerization of
Organizations.” Systèmes d’Information et
Management 7 (2). https://aisel.aisnet.org/sim/vol7/iss2/2, 26).
Depending on the overlap of the individual and the systemic understanding, this can be a highly rewarding and energising process
or a constraining and frictional one. On the systemic level, the continuous joint flow of interaction and knowledge construction
allows for a certain flexibility and resilience of the team as a cognitive system and helps it to deal with the absence of team
members or introduction of new team members (Groleau 2002Groleau, Carole 2002 “Structuration,
Situated Action and Distributed Cognition: Rethinking the Computerization of
Organizations.” Systèmes d’Information et
Management 7 (2). https://aisel.aisnet.org/sim/vol7/iss2/2, 26).
3.3Role of artefacts
The 4EA approaches generally emphasise the significance of artefacts for cognition. Artefacts are not necessarily or
primarily seen as amplifiers of any existing individual cognitive capacity (such as memory or visual perception) but rather change
the nature of the cognitive process (Hutchins 1999 1999 “Cognitive
Artifacts.” In The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive
Sciences, edited by Robert
A. Wilson and Frank
C. Kiel, 126–127. Cambridge: MIT
Press.). From an individual perspective,
they reconfigure the cognitive space and task for the human being who is performing the action (Suchman 2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
). From a systemic perspective, they transform the whole cognitive system (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 378). Menary and Gillett (2022Menary, Richard, and Alexander Gillett 2022 “The
Tools of Enculturation.” Topics in Cognitive
Science 14: 363–387.
, 366) further emphasise that “one cannot consider the cognitive tool, the physical symbols, in separation from the
practices, which govern their manipulation. Cognitive tools are to be thought of conjointly with cognitive practices.” Introducing
a specific artefact into a cognitive system potentially results in a different set of components and relationships, and thus in a
different system dynamic altogether.
Accordingly, despite the common emphasis of the significance of artefacts in the 4EA cluster, there can be differences
in the way their role is described. From an individual perspective, they can be described as external to the cognitive system
(i.e., the individual in their situation of action). Artefacts like technologies form part of the context of action and cognition,
so that “technology is one of many elements of the context having an influence on its unfolding” (Groleau 2002Groleau, Carole 2002 “Structuration,
Situated Action and Distributed Cognition: Rethinking the Computerization of
Organizations.” Systèmes d’Information et
Management 7 (2). https://aisel.aisnet.org/sim/vol7/iss2/2, 17). They are resources to which the cognitive unit of the individual actor can resort.
They provide and are used as “scaffolds” (Clark 1997Clark, Andy 1997 Being
There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together
Again. Cambridge: MIT
Press., 45) – reliable environmental
properties that can be exploited and leaned on to structure activity.
We can also differentiate from an individual perspective between subjects and objects. By dividing artefacts into
objects and cognitive processes into subjects, Suchman (2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press., 269) explicitly seeks to
retain the asymmetry or “dissymmetry” between persons and artefacts. She argues that the scholarly stress on granting artefacts
agency “arose from well-founded concerns to recover for the social sciences and humanities aspects of the lived world” (ibid.) and
to restore the role of technology. However, her project stems from the area of technoscience and engineering where the point of
departure is reversed, with technology in the centre and human and social aspects at the margins: “It is the privileged machine in
this context that creates its marginalized human others” (Suchman 2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
, 270). This is
why she stresses the differences and boundary between humans and non-humans and thus puts the human individual in the centre of
the cognitive process.
From a distributed perspective, however, artefacts form part of the cognitive unit itself. Since this unit is composed of actors and the material world, artefacts are, strictly speaking, not external to the cognitive system but integral components thereof. In fact, Garbis (2002Garbis, Christer 2002 The Cognitive Use of Artifacts in Cooperative Process Management. Rescue Management and Underground Line Control. PhD diss., Linköping University., 50) explains that DC “attempts to move beyond the initial concept of internalization and dissolve the boundary between internal and external, between the individual and the social.”
3.4Role of representation(s)
Since the 4EA cluster incorporates different positions on the concept of representations, not all of them can be
categorised as non-representational views on cognition such as that advocated, for example, by Chemero (2009)Chemero, Anthony 2009 Radical
Embodied Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT
Press. . Situated, 4EA approaches typically assume “local and action-oriented rather than objective and
action-independent” representations (Clark 1997Clark, Andy 1997 Being
There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together
Again. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
, 150). Contrary to its predecessors in
cognitive science, situated cognition does not describe representations as units that actually represent
‘reality’ (e.g., in a propositional manner, in order to be able to process them by mental rules/algorithms) but rather as patterns
generated by one’s own actions (without any representational quality or necessity). They are always constructed
partly anew in the process of their activation, depending on the situation, and are thus always at least partly unpredictable.
In the situated, 4EA cluster, representations have been described as residing inside and outside the brain. Gestures,
facial expressions, speech, tools, visuals, space, body orientation, and other material and immaterial (ephemeral), persistent,
contingent, and provisional structures can all be representations on which the cognitive process unfolds (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge., 384). We use them as representations that facilitate memory, coordination, and
communication.
The DC perspective assumes assemblages of human and non-human elements that function together as a system. According
to Hutchins (2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge., 389), representations in artefacts, bodies, and brains play an
important role here. In his well-known study of an airline cockpit, Hutchins (1995b) 1995b “How
a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds.” Cognitive
Science 19 (3): 265–288.
observed how the planned speed of the airplane is calculated before landing. Whereas a person-centred perspective would focus on
how the pilots remembered what speed to aim for using the instruments in the cockpit, Hutchins depicts the cockpit as a whole as a
distributed cognitive system which functions through the transfer and transformation of representations. As Dahlbäck, Rambusch,
and Susi (2012Dahlbäck, Nils, Jana Rambusch, and Tarja Susi 2012 “Distribuerad kognition [Distributed
cognition].” In Kognitionsvetenskap [Cognitive science], edited
by Jens Allwood and Mikael Jensen, 487–496. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
, 492; our translation) explain, “in this cognitive system, consisting of
the pilots and the artefacts in the cockpit, there are a number of representations and media through which they are transferred
and transformed.” They further specify that “some of the representations are observable (e.g., instruments, manuals, utterances
from the pilots) whereas others are not (e.g., the pilots’ memory)” (ibid.; our translation). Despite the obvious differences in
terms of activities between a cockpit and a translation agency, we could still assume that an analysis of the content of workplace
documents, to-do lists on desktops, information in project management systems, and how human actors interact with such resources
can provide insights into how the larger unit of a team or workplace operates.
4.Situated approaches in CTIS
In this section, we provide a brief overview of scholarly works that seek both to introduce and disentangle tenets of 4EA approaches in CTIS as well as to suggest applications and implications for research on T&I and cognition. We then go on to trace some actual applications of individual-oriented and distributed cognitive perspectives in empirical studies within this field.
In the last couple of decades, 4EA approaches and theoretical frameworks have been gaining ground in research on T&I
processes. Judging from the treatment of 4EA approaches in CTIS publications, this trend even appears to have accelerated in recent
years. Alves and Hurtado (2017)Alves, Fabio, and Amparo
Hurtado Albir 2017 “Evolution,
Challenges, and Perspectives for Research on Cognitive Aspects of
Translation.” In Schwieter and Ferreira (2017, 537–554). note that “a latest trend of research […] considers
translation to be a particular type of embodied and situated activity” (2017Alves, Fabio, and Amparo
Hurtado Albir 2017 “Evolution,
Challenges, and Perspectives for Research on Cognitive Aspects of
Translation.” In Schwieter and Ferreira (2017, 537–554).
, 549), while
Jakobsen (2017Jakobsen, Arnt
L. 2017 “Translation Process
Research.” In Schwieter and Ferreira (2017, 21–49).
, 39) talks of situated approaches as being an “extended version of TPR.” The
way in which recent CTIS publications address the introduction of 4EA frameworks into CTIS research suggests that they have now become
accepted approaches for the study of cognitive processes in T&I research (Risku and Rogl
2021Risku, Hanna, and Regina Rogl 2021 “Translation
and Situated, Embodied, Distributed, Embedded, and Extended
Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Cognition, edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt
Lykke Jakobsen, 478–499. Abingdon: Routledge.
). Referring to situated approaches, Alves and Jakobsen (2021Alves, Fabio, and Arnt
Lykke Jakobsen 2021 “Grounding
Cognitive Translation Studies: Goals, Commitments and
Challenges.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Cognition, edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt
Lykke Jakobsen, 545–554. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 549),
indicate that “recent developments in cognitive science require reformulations of previously used concepts and paradigms in CTS.” Such
theoretical reorientations can already be discerned in Muñoz’s (2010Muñoz
Martín, Ricardo 2010 “On
Paradigms and Cognitive Translatology.” In Translation and
Cognition, edited by Gregory Shreve and Erik Angelone, 169–187. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
, 2016 2016 “Reembedding
Translation Process Research: An Introduction.” In Reembedding
Translation Process Research, edited by Ricardo
Muñoz Martín, 1–20. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
, 2017 2017 “Looking
Toward the Future of Cognitive Translation Studies.” In Schwieter and Ferreira (2017, 555–572).
) development of cognitive translatology, which is
presented as an approach to translation and cognition based on 4EA perspectives, as well as in the extended translation approach
developed by Risku and her colleagues (e.g., Risku and Windhager 2015Risku, Hanna, and Florian Windhager 2015 “Extended
Translation: A Socio-Cognitive Research
Agenda.” In Interdisciplinarity in Translation and Interpreting
Process Research, edited by Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Susanne Göpferich, and Sharon O’Brien, 35–47. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
). Another indication
of the increasing integration of situated approaches is found in Xiao and Halverson (2021Xiao, Kairong, and Sandra
L. Halverson 2021 “Cognitive
Translation and Interpreting Studies (CTIS): Emerging Trends in Epistemology and
Methodology.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 235–250.
, 237), who present the classical information processing and situated paradigms as the two “cognitive paradigms” at work
in CTIS research. Similarly, Risku and Rogl (2021)Risku, Hanna, and Regina Rogl 2021 “Translation
and Situated, Embodied, Distributed, Embedded, and Extended
Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Cognition, edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt
Lykke Jakobsen, 478–499. Abingdon: Routledge.
point out that the previously
predominant information processing paradigm is now used alongside 4EA approaches in CTIS.
At the start of the twenty-first century, Risku (2002)Risku, Hanna 2002 “Situatedness
in Translation Studies.” Cognitive Systems
Research 3 (3): 523–533. discussed the notion of
situatedness in Translation Studies (TS), contrasting what was then termed situated translation with situated cognition. This was
followed by an extended discussion and refinement of the application of tenets of situated approaches in TS (e.g., Risku 2010 2010 “A
Cognitive Scientific View on Technical Communication and Translation: Do Embodiment and Situatedness Really Make a
Difference?” Target 22 (1): 94–111.
; Risku, Windhager, and Apfelthaler
2013Risku, Hanna, Florian Windhager, and Matthias Apfelthaler 2013 “A
Dynamic Network Model of Translatorial Cognition and Action.” Translation
Spaces 2, 151–182.
), which ultimately resulted in the formulation of a tentative framework geared explicitly towards the study of
socio-cognitive translation processes (extended translation; Risku and Windhager 2015Risku, Hanna, and Florian Windhager 2015 “Extended
Translation: A Socio-Cognitive Research
Agenda.” In Interdisciplinarity in Translation and Interpreting
Process Research, edited by Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Susanne Göpferich, and Sharon O’Brien, 35–47. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
).
This framework provides a detailed sketch of phenomena of interest to analyses of translation processes that focus on interactions
between factors such as cognition, action, social networks, artefacts, and environments (see also Risku, Windhager, and Apfelthaler 2013Risku, Hanna, Florian Windhager, and Matthias Apfelthaler 2013 “A
Dynamic Network Model of Translatorial Cognition and Action.” Translation
Spaces 2, 151–182.
). Muñoz (2010Muñoz
Martín, Ricardo 2010 “On
Paradigms and Cognitive Translatology.” In Translation and
Cognition, edited by Gregory Shreve and Erik Angelone, 169–187. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
, 2016 2016 “Reembedding
Translation Process Research: An Introduction.” In Reembedding
Translation Process Research, edited by Ricardo
Muñoz Martín, 1–20. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
, 2017 2017 “Looking
Toward the Future of Cognitive Translation Studies.” In Schwieter and Ferreira (2017, 555–572).
) likewise introduces different orientations within 4EA
approaches, outlining the implications for research into cognitive aspects of translation. Furthermore, research on cognitive
ergonomic aspects of translation has contributed to the introduction of situated approaches as a point of departure in research on
translation (e.g., Teixeira and O’Brien 2017Teixeira, Carlos
S. C., and Sharon O’Brien 2017 “Investigating
the Cognitive Ergonomic Aspects of Translation Tools in a Workplace Setting.” Translation
Spaces 6 (1): 79–103.
). Another study in this area is presented by
Ehrensberger-Dow and Massey (2019Ehrensberger-Dow, Maureen, and Gary Massey 2019 “Socio-Technical
Issues in Professional Translation Practice.” In Translation Practice
in the Field: Current Research on Socio-Cognitive Processes, edited by Hanna Risku, Regina Rogl, and Jelena Milosevic, 105–122. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
, 105), who propose that “viewing translation as a
situated activity involving embodied, embedded cognition within a network of mutually interdependent ‘actors and factors’ allows a
better appreciation of the socio-technical issues that can impinge on professional practice.” When it comes to the individual and
distributed perspectives, the former so far appears to have been most frequently applied, although the latter is also discussed both
by Risku (2010 2010 “A
Cognitive Scientific View on Technical Communication and Translation: Do Embodiment and Situatedness Really Make a
Difference?” Target 22 (1): 94–111.
; see also Risku and Rogl 2021Risku, Hanna, and Regina Rogl 2021 “Translation
and Situated, Embodied, Distributed, Embedded, and Extended
Cognition.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Cognition, edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt
Lykke Jakobsen, 478–499. Abingdon: Routledge.
)
and by Muñoz (2010)Muñoz
Martín, Ricardo 2010 “On
Paradigms and Cognitive Translatology.” In Translation and
Cognition, edited by Gregory Shreve and Erik Angelone, 169–187. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
.
4.1Empirical applications of situated approaches in CTIS
Following the conceptual work done by Risku (2010) 2010 “A
Cognitive Scientific View on Technical Communication and Translation: Do Embodiment and Situatedness Really Make a
Difference?” Target 22 (1): 94–111. and Muñoz (2010)Muñoz
Martín, Ricardo 2010 “On
Paradigms and Cognitive Translatology.” In Translation and
Cognition, edited by Gregory Shreve and Erik Angelone, 169–187. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
, there has been an increase in empirical work that uses situated approaches
as its theoretical point of departure. In addition to the research on cognitive ergonomic aspects of translation mentioned in
Section 4, situated studies addressing social interaction and technology use in
translation workplaces have also emerged in recent years, a selection of which are briefly presented in this section.
As can be concluded from several publications (e.g., Risku 2002Risku, Hanna 2002 “Situatedness
in Translation Studies.” Cognitive Systems
Research 3 (3): 523–533. , 2010 2010 “A
Cognitive Scientific View on Technical Communication and Translation: Do Embodiment and Situatedness Really Make a
Difference?” Target 22 (1): 94–111.
, 2014 2014 “Translation
Process Research as Interaction Research: From Mental to Socio-Cognitive
Processes.” In Minding Translation/Con la traducción en
mente, edited by Ricardo
Muñoz Martín, special issue
of MonTI 1: 331–353.
; Hirvonen and Tiittula 2018Hirvonen, Maija, and Liisa Tiittula 2018 “How
are Translations Created? Using Multimodal Conversation Analysis to Study a Team Translation
Process.” Linguistica Antverpiensa, New Series: Themes in Translation
Studies 17: 157–173.
; Korhonen and Hirvonen 2021Korhonen, Annamari, and Maija Hirvonen 2021 “Joint
Creative Process in Translation: Socially Distributed Cognition in Two Production
Contexts.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 251–276.
; Pleijel 2021Pleijel, Richard 2021 “Translation
Teams as Cognitive Systems: Archival Material, Cognitive Artifacts, and Group-Level Cognitive
Processes.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 307–327.
; Sannholm 2021Sannholm, Raphael 2021 Translation,
Teamwork, and Technology: The Use of Social and Material Scaffolds in the Translation Process. PhD
diss. Stockholm University.), 4EA approaches
entail a specific interest in interactions of different sorts. The notion of interaction is made relevant from several different
perspectives. It not only concerns interaction between social actors and with various artefacts (in the translation process), it
is also used to depict the very nature of cognition as perceived from a 4EA perspective. One case where cognition in the
translation process is approached not (solely) as the internal manipulation of mental representations but as the result of
interaction between agents and environments is presented by Risku (2014) 2014 “Translation
Process Research as Interaction Research: From Mental to Socio-Cognitive
Processes.” In Minding Translation/Con la traducción en
mente, edited by Ricardo
Muñoz Martín, special issue
of MonTI 1: 331–353.
, who analyses
a translator’s interaction with the material environment at her workplace. A key observation in this study is that the translator
manages different tasks and difficulties by interactively “re-configuring the cognitive space” (Risku 2014 2014 “Translation
Process Research as Interaction Research: From Mental to Socio-Cognitive
Processes.” In Minding Translation/Con la traducción en
mente, edited by Ricardo
Muñoz Martín, special issue
of MonTI 1: 331–353.
, 348) and interacting “with self-produced stimuli” (347). Such stimuli include the emerging
target text as well as tentative formulations which are voiced aloud. As the translator in question is not interacting with any
social others, such actions may be seen as modifications of the immediate environment, conceivably supporting further actions.
Martín de León and Fernández Santana (2021)Martín de
León, Celia, and Alba
Fernández Santana 2021 “Embodied
Cognition in the Booth: Referential and Pragmatic Gestures in Simultaneous
Interpreting.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 277–306. , who apply the embodied
cognition perspective in an analysis of the work of simultaneous interpreters, also focus on interactions that can conceivably be
seen as modifications of the immediate environment. Observing the different ways in which interpreters use bodily gestures during
the interpreting process (and with reference to the research tradition of studying gestures from the perspective of embodied
understanding), they suggest that interpreters use gestures to facilitate comprehension and the construction of meaning, which can
be related to Risku’s (2014 2014 “Translation
Process Research as Interaction Research: From Mental to Socio-Cognitive
Processes.” In Minding Translation/Con la traducción en
mente, edited by Ricardo
Muñoz Martín, special issue
of MonTI 1: 331–353.
, 347) conception of “self-produced stimuli.” Importantly,
the interpreters in Martín de León and Fernández Santana’s study do not interact directly with other social actors, which means
that the gestures are not used in this case in social interaction as the setup was artificial: the speaker appeared on a video
recording, and there was no audience (besides the researchers). They conclude that simultaneous interpreting can be seen as a
“multimodal, embodied cognitive activity […] that can extend beyond the interpreter’s organism” (Martín de León and Fernández Santana 2021Martín de
León, Celia, and Alba
Fernández Santana 2021 “Embodied
Cognition in the Booth: Referential and Pragmatic Gestures in Simultaneous
Interpreting.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 277–306.
, 302).
In Hirvonen and Tiittula (2018)Hirvonen, Maija, and Liisa Tiittula 2018 “How
are Translations Created? Using Multimodal Conversation Analysis to Study a Team Translation
Process.” Linguistica Antverpiensa, New Series: Themes in Translation
Studies 17: 157–173. and Korhonen and Hirvonen (2021)Korhonen, Annamari, and Maija Hirvonen 2021 “Joint
Creative Process in Translation: Socially Distributed Cognition in Two Production
Contexts.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 251–276.
, the interaction studied is primarily of a social kind. In their studies of
audio-description (Hirvonen and Tiittula 2018Hirvonen, Maija, and Liisa Tiittula 2018 “How
are Translations Created? Using Multimodal Conversation Analysis to Study a Team Translation
Process.” Linguistica Antverpiensa, New Series: Themes in Translation
Studies 17: 157–173.
) and the comparison of audio-description
and commercial specialised translation (Korhonen and Hirvonen 2021Korhonen, Annamari, and Maija Hirvonen 2021 “Joint
Creative Process in Translation: Socially Distributed Cognition in Two Production
Contexts.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 251–276.
), the authors look
mainly at how verbal contributions and responses can be seen as constitutive of collaborative processes in which translation
problems are jointly addressed by the different actors. The focus in these studies is on the co-construction of translations
between different social actors working together.
Sannholm (2021)Sannholm, Raphael 2021 Translation, Teamwork, and Technology: The Use of Social and Material Scaffolds in the Translation Process. PhD diss. Stockholm University., in turn, focuses on the interactive co-construction of solutions to translation problems as it unfolds in digital communication between translators working for a language service provider and on how such interaction intersects with the use of material resources. He observes that translators, when seeking assistance from colleagues, perform actions to narrow and clarify the frames of problematic source text items. This includes specifying the material resources that have been consulted prior to reaching out for help.
Pleijel (2021)Pleijel, Richard 2021 “Translation
Teams as Cognitive Systems: Archival Material, Cognitive Artifacts, and Group-Level Cognitive
Processes.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 307–327. discusses the concept of interaction in relation to
collaboration in the translation process. Based on a retrospective reflection on collaboration between different actors involved
in the three-decade process of retranslating the Bible into Swedish, he contends that different versions of the emerging target
texts and adjacent comments can be understood as cognitive artefacts which communicate the residue of previous decisions and
instances of reasoning within the teams. The notion that interim versions of target text items serve to mediate representations
within a cognitive system of different actors resonates with the points made by Korhonen and
Hirvonen (2021)Korhonen, Annamari, and Maija Hirvonen 2021 “Joint
Creative Process in Translation: Socially Distributed Cognition in Two Production
Contexts.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 251–276.
(see also Sannholm 2021Sannholm, Raphael 2021 Translation,
Teamwork, and Technology: The Use of Social and Material Scaffolds in the Translation Process. PhD
diss. Stockholm University., 103). Pleijel (2021)Pleijel, Richard 2021 “Translation
Teams as Cognitive Systems: Archival Material, Cognitive Artifacts, and Group-Level Cognitive
Processes.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 307–327.
also suggests that the translation teams in his study can be viewed as cognitive systems,
as the target texts can be seen to result from their joint actions rather than from the work of any one particular individual. In
other words, the role of interaction is traced retrospectively by focusing on the ways in which the work of translation team
members draws on previous work in the form of target text versions and comments.
Although there are some studies that allude to distributed cognition in their titles and elsewhere (e.g., Dragsted 2008Dragsted, Barbara 2008 “Computer-Aided
Translation as a Distributed Cognitive Task.” In Cognition
Distributed: How Cognitive Technology Extends Our Minds, edited by Itiel
E. Dror and Stevan Harnad, 238–256. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. ; Nurminen 2020Nurminen, Mary 2020 “Raw
Machine Translation Use by Patent Professionals: A Case of Distributed Cognition.” Translation,
Cognition &
Behavior 3 (1): 100–121.
), CTIS
publications which explicitly apply DC as a theoretical perspective are rarer than those using individual-centred cognitive
perspectives (see Korhonen and Hirvonen 2021Korhonen, Annamari, and Maija Hirvonen 2021 “Joint
Creative Process in Translation: Socially Distributed Cognition in Two Production
Contexts.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 251–276.
, 254–255). References to DC can also be
detected in the use of certain terminologies and conclusions drawn from analyses of empirical data (as is the case in Pleijel [2021]Pleijel, Richard 2021 “Translation
Teams as Cognitive Systems: Archival Material, Cognitive Artifacts, and Group-Level Cognitive
Processes.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 307–327.
).
The study presented by Korhonen and Hirvonen (2021)Korhonen, Annamari, and Maija Hirvonen 2021 “Joint
Creative Process in Translation: Socially Distributed Cognition in Two Production
Contexts.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 251–276. draws on the work of
Hutchins (1995aHutchins, Edwin 1995a Cognition
in the Wild. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
, 1995b 1995b “How
a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds.” Cognitive
Science 19 (3): 265–288.
) and approaches
interaction between different actors in the translation process from the DC perspective. The authors emphasise the social
perspective and label their theoretical lens as socially distributed cognition. Similarly to Pleijel (2021)Pleijel, Richard 2021 “Translation
Teams as Cognitive Systems: Archival Material, Cognitive Artifacts, and Group-Level Cognitive
Processes.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 307–327.
, they posit that the different actors in the translation process can be seen as a single cognitive
system which functions by means of communication (e.g., in the form of draft translations). Going further, they consider how
creativity emerges within this overarching cognitive system.
Sannholm (2021)Sannholm, Raphael 2021 Translation,
Teamwork, and Technology: The Use of Social and Material Scaffolds in the Translation Process. PhD
diss. Stockholm University. also uses the notion of the cognitive system to approach
interaction in the translation process but makes a distinction between individual and distributed cognitive perspectives based on
the delimitation of the object of study. Focusing on the interactions of individual translators with their environment (e.g., for
problem solving), the boundaries of the object of study are taken to encompass the individual plus the respective social and
material resources (cf. Korhonen and Hirvonen 2021Korhonen, Annamari, and Maija Hirvonen 2021 “Joint
Creative Process in Translation: Socially Distributed Cognition in Two Production
Contexts.” Cognitive Linguistic
Studies 8 (2): 251–276. , 254–255). However, for certain
processes like remembering, Sannholm (2021)Sannholm, Raphael 2021 Translation,
Teamwork, and Technology: The Use of Social and Material Scaffolds in the Translation Process. PhD
diss. Stockholm University. suggests that the boundaries of the
cognitive system may be productively drawn around larger constellations such as translation teams.
5.Case study
In this section, we discuss different ways in which interactions in the translation process can be analysed in light of the abovementioned assumptions regarding the individual and distributed perspectives. The extract quoted is taken from a conversation between two translators communicating via instant messaging (IM), which stems from a larger body of empirical ethnographic data made up of observational, interview, documentary, and digital communication data (for further details, see Sannholm 2021Sannholm, Raphael 2021 Translation, Teamwork, and Technology: The Use of Social and Material Scaffolds in the Translation Process. PhD diss. Stockholm University.).
5.1Empirical extract
The empirical setting for the conversation in question is the Swedish translation office of a global language service provider, where a team of thirty translators and other staff worked at the time of data collection in 2017. The translators were divided into three teams, each of which focused on a specific set of clients based on the subject matter of the translation jobs (medical technology, general technology, and information technology). The translators featured in this extract form part of the general technology team. Elsa is fairly new to the translation profession (one and a half years) and this workplace (ten months), while Hugo has worked as a translator for sixteen years, fifteen of which have been with this particular language service provider. At the time of data collection, remote work was still rare, and the translators were generally co-present in the office premises. Nevertheless, in addition to interacting face-to-face in the workplace, they also communicated via email and IM.
The main activity in the IM conversation displayed in Table 1 could be constructed as an attempt to agree on the interpretation of a technical source text term. The conversation starts as Elsa reaches out to Hugo for assistance on what appears to be the interpretation of a specific source text item (line 4).
1 | Elsa 15:36: |
hallå
där
‘hi there’ |
2 |
jag håller på med en liten
[kund]
‘I’m working on a small [client]’ |
|
3 |
men jag är lite
perplex
‘but I’m a bit puzzled’ |
|
4 | 10 Hz [ST terms removed to prevent identification] | |
5 |
har du någon
aning
‘do you have any idea’ |
|
6 |
(finns ingenting i minnet eller i
glossaryt)
‘(there’s nothing in the memory or the glossary)’ |
|
7 | Hugo 15:40: |
tjoho! Ska
se
‘yay! I’ll check!’ |
8 | Elsa 15:40: |
tackar!
‘thanks!’ |
9 | Hugo 15:43: |
Har du kollat i
källtexten?
‘Have you checked the source text?’ |
10 |
Ligger
här:
‘It’s here:’ |
|
11 | http:// [client website] | |
12 | Elsa 15:45: |
ja, jag tyckte inte det
hjälpte
‘yes, I didn’t think it helped’ |
13 | Hugo 15:48: |
Här finns lite beskrivande
text:
‘Here’s some descriptive text:’ https://[client website] |
14 |
Hittade:
‘Found this:’ [pastes text from website] |
|
15 | Elsa 15:48: |
så typ att den återger
platsen?
‘so it displays the location?’ |
16 |
det är det jag har försökt komma
fram till också
‘that’s what I’ve been trying to understand as well’ |
|
17 | Hugo 15:49: |
ja man kan spara platser och hitta
tillbaka
‘yes, you can save locations and find your way back’ |
18 | Elsa 15:50: |
10 Hz platsåtergivande ?
typ?
‘10 Hz location rendering? Something like that?’ |
19 | Hugo 15:50: |
Om det blir segt att
konkordanssöka så kan du avaktivera alla minnen utom de två
huvudminnena
‘If the concordance search gets slow, you can deactivate all memories except for the two main ones’ |
20 | Elsa 15:50: |
japp har gjort
det
‘yep, I’ve done that’ |
21 |
tack för tipset
:)
‘thanks for the tip :)’ |
|
22 | Hugo 15:52: |
jag uppfattar capture som att man
sparar platserna
‘I take capture to mean that you save locations’ |
23 | Elsa 15:52: |
ahhh det är
bättre
‘ahhh that’s better’ |
24 |
så typ 10 Hz platssparar?
platssparande?
‘so, something like 10 Hz location saves? location saving?’ |
|
25 | Hugo 15:53: |
B-) nåt i den stilen. Går det
bättre att jobba nu? Eller är det fortfarande segt?
‘B-) something like that. Is it easier to work now? Or is it still slow?’ |
26 | Elsa 15:54: |
supersegt
‘super slow’ |
5.2Analysis
We will now use this extract to discuss the analytical implications of using the individual and the distributed perspectives when analysing interaction in the translation process. In doing so, we will structure the discussion along the aspects considered in the previous sections of the article: (1) boundaries of the unit of analysis, (2) structuration of activity, (3) role of artefacts, and (4) role of representations.
5.2.1Boundaries of the unit of analysis
Approaching interactions of the kind displayed in Table 1 from the
individual perspective means taking the individual translator as the point of departure. In this scenario, the analysis would
focus on Elsa’s interactions with different resources and the way she interactively and discursively modifies the conditions
for obtaining relevant input from her colleague. Such modifications can be discerned not only in the way the problematic
source text item is contextualised in the conversation, which includes naming the client (line 2), but also in the statement
that material digital resources have been consulted and deemed unhelpful (line 6). In other words, it can be inferred that
some form of interaction with material resources (specifically the translation memory [TM] and glossary) preceded the action
of reaching out to a colleague. Looking at how the social interaction unfolds, it can also be assumed that the meaning
ascribed to these statements by Hugo is dependent on the situated and cultural embedding of the activity and a “mutual
intelligibility” (Suchman 2007Suchman, Lucy 2007 Human-Machine
Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press., 63) which results from situated interpretation,
shared experiences, and the recurring nature of the activity. As a simple illustration, it is not far-fetched to assume that a
statement like ‘there is nothing in the memory or the glossary’ (line 6) only makes sense in the given situation and, more
specifically, in relation to the preceding remarks, which have served to identify and contextualise the difficulty with the
source text.
From the individual perspective, the analysis thus focuses on Elsa’s interactions with Hugo and her implied and actual use of different artefacts. In this scenario, it is still the individual translator’s cognitive processes that take centre stage but – and contrary to traditional conceptions of cognition – these processes unfold interactively as she dynamically navigates through the task at hand.
When approaching the interaction from the distributed perspective, the boundaries of the unit of analysis could
be extended to both actors and the material resources involved. It is important to note, however, that these boundaries should
not be seen as a given. Indeed, Hutchins (2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge., 376) states that “rather than
assuming a boundary for the unit of analysis a priori, distributed cognition […] attempts to put boundaries on its unit of
analysis in ways that do not leave important things unexplained or unexplainable.” Thus, if the research interest concerns,
for example, how remembering works in a translation workplace, the material resources surfacing in the interaction in the
empirical extract are not reduced to external aids which may support individual memory. They are instead seen as
co-constitutive of the cognitive system that does the remembering, which in DC terms happens through communications within the
system, both by means of face-to-face and direct digital interaction between people (e.g., via IM, as in the extract) as well
as through the use of material resources such as digital systems and documents.
5.2.2Structuration of activity
With regard to the structuration of activity as seen from the individual perspective, the individual actor navigates the present environment using the resources it provides. In our empirical extract, we can see that Elsa has not only sought support from situation-specific material resources, but also pursues different paths towards a possible target text solution by responding to the various resources and responses she receives as the interaction unfolds. For example, she formulates assumptions about the meaning of the source text item (line 15) in response to the introduction of information from the website (line 14) and reconsiders these assumptions (lines 23–24) based on the assumption formulated by Hugo (line 22). Thus, rather than being indicative of a preconceived ‘plan’ for reaching a solution to the problem posed by the source text item, the interaction suggests a dynamic interaction with situation-specific resources as assumptions about meaning emerge and are reformulated.
For the translation team, of which Elsa and Hugo form part, a conceivable goal is to deliver translated texts of
a certain quality that (at the very least) do not attract negative attention from reviewers and clients. Taking the
distributed perspective, both the disclosure of unhelpful resources (line 6) and Hugo’s insistence that textual and TM
resources are to be used (lines 9, 13, 14, and 19) could be taken as indications of how the task at hand – to be performed in
this instance by Elsa – unfolds at the system level. Some elements in the interaction are also indicative of previous
activities of a similar kind. For example, terms such as “minnet” ‘the memory’ (line 6),
“glossaryt” ‘the glossary’ (line 6), and “konkordanssöka” ‘do a concordance search’
(line 19) are used and responded to in a way that suggests previous usage and common ground within the team. Again, as
Hutchins (2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge., 385) points out, “features of a shared task world can contribute to
the establishment and maintenance of common ground.”
5.2.3The role of artefacts
Even a short extract of interaction in the translation process like this allows us to formulate assumptions about the role of artefacts in the translation process, as we can observe how the use of resources like TM systems, glossaries, the source text, and other textual resources surface throughout the conversation, both directly and in the participants’ references to them. Elsa’s efforts to construct an interpretation of the source text item proceed in part through interactions with textual content in digital resources introduced by Hugo, some of which are rejected as unhelpful (lines 6 and 12).
In a similar manner, the distributed perspective would pay attention to translators’ interactions with each other in relation to TMs and other technological resources. However, when considering the team as the object of study, potential research foci would also concern, for example, how information discrepancies in digital systems are managed and how information is maintained, manipulated, and disseminated across resources in the organisation. Such activities imply considerations of different time scales as translators act not only to establish support in relation to immediate needs but also to ensure the long-term accuracy and reliability of information in the organisation. While such actions are not present in the empirical extract above, the fact that the participants orient towards the TM system in different ways is suggestive of the importance ascribed to this resource (Elsa’s evaluation of the TM and glossary [line 6]; Hugo’s suggestion for how to overcome the failure to retrieve TM matches using the concordance search feature [line 19]).
5.2.4The role of representations
When examining this interaction from the individual and distributed perspectives, the conceptualisation of representations differs. From the individual perspective, situation-bound and contingent representations could be assumed to be at work in (and result from) the discursive actions. Indeed, Elsa’s gradual construction of interpretations of the source text item clearly emerges as the interaction proceeds (lines 15, 18, 23, and 24) in response to Hugo’s actions (lines 13, 14, 17, and 22). However, actions in the present also draw on actions in the past, and representations are likely to comprise elements of previous experiences, which in the situation in question encompass numerous aspects related to the client, their text types, guidelines, particular restrictions, etc. For example, the assumption about source text meaning formulated by Elsa (line 15) conceivably arises partly from previous experience and knowledge (of the client, language, translation, etc.) and partly from the action-generated input mediated discursively (lines 13 and 14).
Turning to the distributed perspective, Hutchins and Palen (1997Hutchins, Edwin, and Leysia Palen 1997 “Constructing
Meaning from Space, Gesture, and Speech.” In Discourse, Tools, and
Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition, edited by Lauren
B. Resnick, Roger Säljö, Clotilde Pontecorvo, and Barbara Burge, 23–40. Berlin: Springer. , 24;
emphasis in original) hold that “communicative behaviors are the representations by which a socially
distributed cognitive system does its work.” From this perspective, the analysis looks at communications within the system. In
this empirical extract, the communication includes information generated through online searches. Although the current
empirical data does not reveal how the online content subsequently introduced into the IM conversation was retrieved, it
conceivably resulted from the input of search terms into a search engine. From the distributed perspective, the analysis would
ideally examine how communicative trajectories unfold – for example, how negotiations between social actors lead to the
storage of content in digital resources, which may serve as more or less permanent representations which function as
meaning-making resources in later situations for the same or other social actors.
6.Final remarks and conclusions
The primary aim of this article is to discuss what, if anything, is to be gained from expanding the object of study in CTIS
from individual actors and resources in their environment to the consideration of social interaction and tool use within larger
constellations of human actors and artefacts. Theoretically, these perspectives – which we refer to as the individual/person-centred
and distributed perspectives – are both grounded in the 4EA or situated cognition theoretical cluster (Robbins and Aydede 2009Robbins, Philip, and Murat Aydede 2009 “A
Short Primer on Situated Cognition.” In The Cambridge Handbook of
Situated Cognition, edited by Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede, 3–10. New
York: Cambridge University Press.). Using an extract from empirical data gathered as part of a recent study on social
interaction and technology use in the translation process (Sannholm 2021Sannholm, Raphael 2021 Translation,
Teamwork, and Technology: The Use of Social and Material Scaffolds in the Translation Process. PhD
diss. Stockholm University.), we seek to
illustrate certain analytical and methodological implications of applying these perspectives. In doing so, we focus on a number of
aspects pertinent to both: (1) boundaries of the unit of analysis, (2) structuration of activity, (3) role of artefacts, and (4) role
of representations.
We contend that the distributed perspective provides useful additional conceptual tools for examining the nature of
cognitive processes in translation work. When cognitive processes are analysed from the perspective of a distributed system of human
and non-human elements, we can consider – in line with Hutchins (1995b 1995b “How
a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds.” Cognitive
Science 19 (3): 265–288. , 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
) – information in digital systems and elsewhere as more or less stable representations
and could thus approach the use of technological resources in translation work as interactions between the past and the present (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 379). Remembering, say, how a given term should be translated for a given
client becomes a process which encompasses the translator faced with the task in question, possible target text candidates stored in
the TM, specific settings in the TMs, guidelines for the client stored in documents, and so on. Considering these artefacts as part of
the unit of analysis does not imply that they would do the remembering for us, but rather that their involvement changes the task at
hand: instead of having to mentally remember how the term should be translated, the translator can, for example, do a concordance
search, check a guideline document, and ask a colleague (cf. Dahlbäck, Rambusch, and Susi
2012Dahlbäck, Nils, Jana Rambusch, and Tarja Susi 2012 “Distribuerad kognition [Distributed
cognition].” In Kognitionsvetenskap [Cognitive science], edited
by Jens Allwood and Mikael Jensen, 487–496. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
, 492). Moreover, teamwork in translation can potentially be investigated productively with the notion of
“supraindividual cognitive effects” (Hutchins 2006 2006 “The
Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction.” In Roots of
Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, edited by Nick
J. Enfield and Stephen
C. Levinson, 375–398. Abingdon: Routledge.
, 377) as an analytical lens: if a
constellation of translators with their enculturated tools (Menary and Gillet 2022Menary, Richard, and Alexander Gillett 2022 “The
Tools of Enculturation.” Topics in Cognitive
Science 14: 363–387.
) can be
assumed to display capacities that cannot readily be reduced to the aggregated sum of the individuals’ efforts, this would conceivably
manifest in the team’s interactions, which can be observed and analysed.
To enhance theoretical precision and compatibility with cognitive science perspectives, this article also contributes to the
specification of the cognitive scientific foundation of CTIS research. Conceptual precision can thus hopefully be sought by using the
specifications we have put forward diagnostically. As scholars consider what perspective would be the most productive analytically in
prospective and ongoing research, reflections can be made with regard to the unit of analysis, the role of artefacts as well as the
structuration of activity and the role of representations. For example, considering the underlying assumptions of extended translation
(Risku and Windhager 2015Risku, Hanna, and Florian Windhager 2015 “Extended
Translation: A Socio-Cognitive Research
Agenda.” In Interdisciplinarity in Translation and Interpreting
Process Research, edited by Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Susanne Göpferich, and Sharon O’Brien, 35–47. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. ) and its translatorial cognition and action model (Risku, Windhager, and Apfelthaler 2013Risku, Hanna, Florian Windhager, and Matthias Apfelthaler 2013 “A
Dynamic Network Model of Translatorial Cognition and Action.” Translation
Spaces 2, 151–182.
), it is clear that extended translation assumes the
distributed perspective with regard to all four aspects mentioned above: (1) It looks at distributed, socio-cognitive systems as the
unit of analysis; (2) it assumes collective, extended agency and structuration inside the socio-cognitive system; (3) it regards
artefacts as parts of the socio-cognitive system (and their integration as transforming the whole system); and (4) it studies the role
of mental and physical representations as elements of the cognitive process.
In this article, we have explored some of the consequences of applying a distributed perspective in research on translation activities and discussed selected issues – from the unit of analysis to the understanding of the role of representations. However, our analysis is by no means an exhaustive description of possible systemic, socio-cognitive implications connected to this change of perspective. Promising further foci and avenues of research include, for example, studying agency, responsibility, and expertise from a distributed perspective. In addition, exploring the ethical consequences arising from the distributed view on translation processes seems a highly pertinent question to be further investigated.
Funding
Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Stockholm University.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Nils Dahlbäck for his comments on an earlier draft and to the two anonymous reviewers, whose feedback has contributed considerably to improving this paper.
References
Address for correspondence
Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism
Stockholm University
SE-106 91 STOCKHOLM
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