Mona Baker

Biography:

Main Research Area
My main research interest at the moment is examining the role played by translators and interpreters in mediating conflict. The underlying assumption of my work is that whoever undertakes it, and whatever form it takes, translation is never a by-product of social and political developments. It is part and parcel of the very process that makes these developments possible in the first place. Translation is also not innocent. It is not about "building bridges" or "enabling communication" as is commonly assumed, but about the active circulation and promotion of narratives. Morally speaking, it is neither inherently good nor inherently bad in itself - it depends on the nature of the narratives it promotes and in which it is embedded, and of course on the narrative location of the person assessing it.

In all types of conflict, but particularly in an international conflict such as the war on Iraq and the so-called war on terror, translation is central to the ability of all parties to legitimize their version of events, their narratives. Since this type of conflict is played out in the international arena and cannot simply be resolved by appealing to local constituencies at home, each party to the conflict has to rely on various processes of translation to elaborate and promote a particular narrative. I am interested in studying the way in which translation functions in this context, including the selection of texts to be translated, the type of people involved in translating them (irrespective of whether they are professional translators), and the various agendas they serve. This includes researching the use of translation by powerful, well-funded institutions as well as its use by various groups of peace activists and humanitarian organisations with little or no funding and no access to major media outlets.

Related publications include Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account (Routledge 2006), 'Narratives of Security and Terrorism: 'Accurate' Translations, Suspicious Frames (Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2010), 'Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action (Social Movement Studies, 2012), "Translation and Activism: Emerging Patterns of Narrative Community" (The Massachusetts Review, 2006), "Reframing Conflict in Translation" (Social Semiotics 2007), ''Resisting State Terror: Communities of Activist Translators and Interpreters'' (in press), 'Ethics of Renarration' (interview with Andrew Chesterman, to appear in Cultus), "Contextualization in Translator- and Interpreter-mediated Events" (Journal of Pragmatics) and "Narratives in and of Translation" (SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation, 2005). A talk I gave at Fujian Normal University in China in 2006, entitled 'Translation as Renarration', summarises some of this work.

Second Research Area
Prof. Mona Baker’s second area of research interest is the use of corpora as a resource for studying various features of translation, including the distinctive nature of translated text and the distinctive styles of individual translators (see Baker 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, in press, Olohan and Baker 2000). The nature and pressures of the translation process are bound to leave traces in the language that translators (and interpreters) produce. Some of this patterning has been explained in terms of notions such as simplification (a tendency on the part of translators to simplify the language or message or both) and explicitation (the tendency to spell things out in translation, including - in its simplest form - the practice of adding background information). The kind of methodology available from corpus linguistics offers one of the most effective ways of capturing such distinctive features of translation, because it allows us to study a massive amount of text and identify global patterning that is difficult or impossible to capture through manual analyses. A corpus of translated text can also be used to study variation in the output of individual translators (as in Baker 2000, 2004), the impact of specific source languages on the patterning of the target language, the impact of text type on translation strategies, and various other issues which are of interest to both the translation scholar and the corpus linguist. For more details on this research area, browse the pages of the Translational English Corpus, the largest corpus of translated language anywhere in the world. TEC received funding from the British Academy in the past and continues to be housed at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies.

Academic Publications:

Authored book

Baker, Mona. In Other Words. London & New York: Routledge, 2011. eScholarID:4b1848

Baker, Mona. Translation and Conflict. London & New York: Routledge, 2006. eScholarID:4b1204

Baker, Mona. In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London; New York: Routledge, 1992. eScholarID:4b747

Edited book

Baker, Mona. Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution London & New York: Routledge, 2015.

Baker, Mona and Maier, Carol. ed. Ethics and the Curriculum. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 2011. eScholarID:121648

Baker, Mona. Critical Readings in Translation Studies. London & New York: Routledge, 2010. eScholarID:4b1850

Baker, Mona, Olohan, Maeve and Calzada Perez, Maria. ed. Text and Context.Manchester: St Jerome Publishing, 2010. eScholarID:121649

Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha. ed. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London & New York: Routledge, 2009. eScholarID:4b1851

Baker, Mona. Translation Studies. Critical Concepts. London & New York: Routledge., 2009. eScholarID:4b1849

Baker, . Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London & New York: Routledge, 2001. eScholarID:4b1852

Baker, Mona. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London; New York: Routledge, 1998. eScholarID:4b748

Baker, . Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair. Edited by Gill Francis & Elena Tognini-Bonelli. , Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993. eScholarID:4b1853

Book contribution

Baker, Mona. "The Changing Landscape of Translation and Interpreting Studies." In A Companion to Translation Studies, ed. Bermann, Sandra and Catherine Porter, 15-27. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. eScholarID:223320

"Translation as Renarration." In Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach, ed. Juliane House, in press. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. eScholarID:195263

Baker, Mona. "Translation and Activism." In Translation, Resistance, Activism, ed. Tymoczko, Maria, 23-41. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010. eScholarID:121650

Baker, Mona. "Guerre di parole: strategie di reframing nella traduzione dei conflitti." In Oltre L'Occidente: Traduzione e alterit à culturale, ed. Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Elan Di Giovanni, 387-423. Milano: Bompiani, 2009. eScholarID:3b3914

Baker, Mona. "Norms." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 189-193. London & New York: Routledge, 2009. eScholarID:3b3935

Baker, Mona. "Resisting state terror : theorizing communities of activist translators and interpreters." In Globalisation, Political Violence and Translation, ed. Esperanza Bielsa and Christopher W. Hughes, 222-242. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. eScholarID:42174

Baker, Mona and Sameh Hanna. "The Arabic Tradition." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 328-337. London & New York: Routledge, 2009. eScholarID:3b3934

Baker, Mona. "Narrativas en y de la traducción." In El Giro Cultural de la Traducci ón, ed. Emilio Ortega Arjonilla, 141-156. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007. eScholarID:3b3895

Baker, Mona. "Linguistic Models and Methods in the Study of Translation." InÜbersetzung* Translation* Traduction, ed. Harald Kittel, Armin Paul Frank, Norbert Greiner, Theo Hermans, Werner Koller, José Lambert, Fritz Paul, 285-294. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. eScholarID:3b3936

Baker. "'The Status of Equivalence in Translation Studies: An Appraisal'." InEnglish-Chinese Comparative Study and Translation, ed. Yang Zijian, Shanghai: Foreign Languages Education Press, 2004. eScholarID:3b3916

Baker, Mona. "The Treatment of Variation in Corpus-based Translation Studies." In Translation and Corpora (Göteborg Studies in English), ed. Karin Aijmer and Hilde Hasselgård, 7-17. Göteborg, Sweden: Göteborg University, 2004. eScholarID:3b3915

Baker, Mona. "Corpus-based Translation Studies in the Academy." InTextologie und Translation: Jahrbuch Übersetzen und Dolmetschen, ed. Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast, Eva Hajicová & Petr Sgall, Zuzana Jetmarová, Annely Rothkegel and Dorothee Rothfuß-Bastian, 7-15. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2003. eScholarID:3b3917

Baker. "Aspectos pragmáticos del contacto intercultural y falsas dicotomías en los estudios de traducción." In Cartografías de la Trducción. Del Post-estructuralismo al Multiculturalismo, ed. Román Álvarez, 43-57.Salamanca: Ediciones Almar, 2002. eScholarID:3b3919

Baker. "'The History of Translation: Recurring Patterns & Research Issues'." InTranslations: (Re)shaping of Literature and Culture, ed. Saliha Paker, 5-14.Istanbul: Bogaziçi University Press, 2002. eScholarID:3b3918

Baker. "'El uso de that en textos traducidos en Inglés: La explicitación como proceso cognitivo en traducción'." In Traducción y Nuevas Tecnologías. Herramientas Auxiliares del Traductor, ed. Carmen Valero Garcés and Isabel de la Cruz Cabanillas, 77-101.Alcalá: Universidad de Alcalá, 2001. eScholarID:3b3922

Baker. "'Investigating the Language of Translation: A Corpus-based Approach'." In Pathways of Translation Studies, ed. Fern á ndez, P. and J. M. Bravo, 47-56.Spain: University of Valladolid, 2001. eScholarID:3b3920

Baker. "'The Pragmatics of Cross-Cultural Contact and Some False Dichotomies in Translation Studies'." In CTIS Occasional Papers, ed. Maeve Olohan, 7-20. UMIST: Manchester: Centre for Translation & Intercultural Studies, 2001. eScholarID:3b3921

Baker. "'Linguistic Perspectives on Translation'." In Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, ed. Peter France, 20-26..Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. eScholarID:3b3937

Baker. "Linguistica dei corpora e traduzione. Per un'analisi del comportamento linguistico dei traduttori professionisti'." In I Corpora nella didattica della traduzione (Corpus Use and Learning to Translate), ed. Silvia Bernardini and Federico Zanettin, Forli, Italy: Biblioteca della Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori., 2000. eScholarID:3b3923

Baker. "'Designing Translation Exercises on CD-ROM: Pedagogical Principles & Theoretical Validity'." In Fidelity and Translation: Communicating the Bible in New Media, ed. Robert Hodgson and Paul Soukup, 71-85.New York: American Bible Society, 1999. eScholarID:3b3926

Baker. "'Investigating the Language of Translation: A Corpus-based Approach'." In Pathways to Translation, ed. P. Fernandez-Nistal, Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid., 1999. eScholarID:3b3925