Mediality and Translation

This chapter aims to help promote a greater awareness of mediality in audiovisual translation studies and to demonstrate its rich potential as a productive angle of enquiry with which to proceed within this field. It starts with a discussion of Marshall McLuhan’s influential work on media as environments and the ways in which these shape our experience of the world. The explanatory power of his philosophy of technology is then illustrated with a pertinent example drawn from Karen Littau’s more recent work on media-induced transformations in reading, writing and translation practices. The following section deals with the criticisms that have been made with respect to this line of thought and the importance of placing (media) tool use in its social context is emphasized. Finally, the second half of this chapter (Mediality and Audiovisual Translation) demonstrates how these ideas can and have been applied specifically with regards to the study of audiovisual translation, tracing the changes in the technological environment over time as a means of shedding light on the gradual shift towards a ‘democratization’ of this activity.