Cultural Functions of Translation

Christina Schäffner is Professor Emerita at Aston University, Birmingham. Until her retirement in September 2015 she was the Head of Translation Studies at Aston, teaching courses in translation studies, interpreting, and supervising Master dissertations and PhD students.  Her main research interests are: political discourse in translation, news translation, metaphor in translation, and translation didactics, and she has published widely on these topics. Major publications include Political Discourse, Media and Translation (edited with S. Bassnett 2010), Translation research and Interpreting research: Traditions, gaps and synergies (2004) and Politics as Text and Talk. Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse (edited with P. Chilton, 2002).

Helen Kelly-Holmes is Professor of Applied Languages at Ollscoil Luimnigh/University of Limerick. Helen’s work focuses on the interrelationship between media, markets, technologies and languages and the management of these relationships. She is particularly interested in the economic aspects of multilingualism in relation to minority languages and the global political economy of English, and she has published widely on these topics.  Recent books include: Language, Global Mobilities, Blue-Collar Workers and Blue-collar Workplaces (Edited with K. Gonçalves, Routledge, 2020); Sociolinguistics from the Periphery: Small Languages in New Circumstances (with S. Pietikainen, A. Jaffe & N. Coupland - Cambridge University Press, 2016).