Professor Ian Mason

Professor Ian Mason retired in December 2007.

Over a long career at Heriot Watt University, he taught translating, translation and interpreting studies and French language studies on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. He played a key role in the School of Social Sciences PhD programme in translation, communication and discourse. 

Among a number of international invitations, he is Visiting Professor at the University of Sichuan, Chengdu, China (2006 onwards) and, from 2009 to 2011, provided doctoral training in applied linguistics and translation studies at the Hellenic American University of Athens. He has delivered invited lectures at the Universities of Lisbon (2006), Modena (2006), HAU, Athens (2006 and 2008) and Pio V, Rome (2007). He was keynote speaker at the 2nd Annual Translation Conference, Academy of Graduate Studies, Benghazi, Libya (2006), at doctoral research conferences in translating and interpreting at the University of Edinburgh (2007) and University College, London (2008) and at the 8th National Conference and International Forum on Interpreting, Sichuan University, China, (2010).

With his colleague Basil Hatim, Ian Mason pioneered an approach to research in translation studies, to translator and interpreter training and to reflective practice in the profession based on a variety of Applied Linguistics-related disciplines (Discourse and the Translator (1990) and The Translator as Communicator (1997)). These include discourse analysis and text linguistics, interactional pragmatics, politeness and relevance theory. In this way, translating and interpreting as special kinds of communicative events were replaced within their socio-cultural context and studied as forms of social behaviour. In subsequent work, he has sought to operationalize this approach and relate it to the particular activities of translating for large institutions and of dialogue interpreting. Recent work draws attention to a serious mismatch between public expectations of interpreters’ performance and attested interpreter behaviour. Such misconceptions affect not only lay-persons but also professional users of interpreting services. Current research focuses on matters of community, identity and communication rights in interpreted encounters, on non-verbal communication and on reader response to translations.

• Mason, I. and Wen Ren ‘Power in Face-to-Face Interpreting Events’, Translation and Interpreting Studies, 5 (1) (forthcoming, 2012).  
• ‘Gaze, Positioning and Identity in Interpreter-Mediated Dialogues’, in L. Gavioli and C. Baraldi (eds.) Coordinating Participation in Dialogue Interpreting. Amsterdam: Benjamins (forthcoming, 2012).  
•  ‘Role, Positioning and Discourse in Face-to-Face Interpreting’, in R. de Pedro Ricoy,  I. Perez and C. Wilson (eds.) Interpreting and Translating in Public Service Settings: Policy, Practice, Pedagogy. Manchester: St Jerome (2010), pp. 52-73.  
•  ‘Discourse, Ideology and Translation’, in Mona Baker (ed.) Critical Readings in Translation Studies. London & New York: Routledge, 2009. [Revised and updated version of article originally published in 1994].              
• (Guest Editor) Research Training in Translation Studies, Special Issue of The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 3 (1) March 2009.  
• ‘Translator Moves and Reader Response: the Impact of Discoursal Shifts in Translation’ in B. Ahrens, L. Černý, M. Krein-Kühle and M. Schreiber (eds.) Translationswissenschaftliches Kolloquium I.  Bern: Peter Lang, 2009, pp. 55-70.   ·        
• ‘Dialogue Interpreting’ in M. Baker (ed.) Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 2009.
• ‘Ostension, Inference and Response: analysing participant moves in Community Interpreting dialogues’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series 5 (2006), pp. 103-120.
• ‘On mutual accessibility of contextual assumptions in dialogue interpreting’, Journal of Pragmatics, March 2006, 38 (3):359-373. ‘
• Text parameters in Translation: Transitivity and Institutional Cultures’ in L Venuti (ed) The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd Edition. Routledge (2004), pp 470-481.
• ‘Projected and Perceived Identities in Dialogue Interpreting’ in J House, M Rosario, M Ruano and N Baumgarten (eds), Translation and the Construction of Identity. IATIS (2005), pp 30-52.
• ‘Deixis as an Interactive Feature in Literary Translations from Romanian into English’, Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, January 2003, 15 (2): 269-294 (with A. Serban).