'Translation, education and pragmatics II' postgraduate symposium (TEP II)

Friday 24 Feb 2023, 10:00 → 20:00 Europe/Athens

organised online by

University of Bari Aldo Moro (UBAM, Department of Humanistic Research and Innovation), Italy

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, (NKUA, Department of English Language & Literature, and the ΜΕΤΑ-FRASEIS Laboratory), Greece

University of Oviedo, Department of English, French and German, Spain,

University of  Salento, Department of Humanities, Italy, 

Aristorle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH, Department of English Language and Literature, and the TICL Laboratory), Greece.

 

 

Call for Papers - 2023 TEP II.pdf

Link to the TEP II symposium 24-2-2023.pdf

Programme_TEP II Postgrad Symposium 24-2-2023.pdf

Symposium evaluation statistics.pdf

The Symposium photo.jpg

You are welcome to join us for coffee.jpg

10:00 → 10:25 [Please, NOTE this is GREEK time. ITALY and SPAIN ARE ONE HOUR EARLIER and start at 9:00 am. Please see uploaded file 'Programme_TEP II Postgrad Symposium 24-2-2023' on the 'Overview' page, for Italian/Spnish timing, because the system does not allow alternative scheduling]

11:00 → 11:03 10.00-10:03_Dr. ANGELO MONACO (in place of the Head of the Department of Humanistic Research and Innovation, University of Bari Aldo Moro [UBAM])

11:00 → 11:15 WELCOME ADDRESSES of Heads and Department representatives:

11:03 → 11:06 10:03-10:06_Dr. NIKOLAOS LAVIDAS (Director of the MAs, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens [NKUA], Department of English Language and Literature)

11:06 → 11:09 10:06-10:09_Dr. ALEJANDRA MORENO ÁLVAREZ (U. Oviedo, Head of Department of the Department of English, French and German)

11:09 → 11:12 10:09-10:12_Dr. MARIA GRAZIA GUIDO (University of Salento, Head of the Department of Humanities)

MARIA GRAZIA GUIDO

11:12 → 11:15 10:12-10:15_Dr. LUISA DESYLLA (Αristotle University of Thessaloniki [AUTH], School of English)

11:30 → 11:45 10:30-10:45_Translating client identity in male cosmetics advertising (Aikaterini Eikosideka)__CHAIR: Dr. MARIA SIDIROPOULOU

Translating client identity in male cosmetics advertising (Aikaterini Eikosideka)
Addressee identity is often claimed to affect the way we structure discourses. The research project adopts a pragmatic lens to male cosmetics advertising, in order to investigate how client identity is shaped cross-culturally through advertisements for men’s deodorants, on the English and Greek market. The study uses communication styles (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov 2010) to account for (a) naturalistic shifts in verbal or multimodal data which tend to improve product reception in the Greek target context and (b) experimental data to confirm how masculinity is shaped and attributed to male clients, by well renowned deodorant companies. As the data analysis progresses, it seems that these socio-pragmatic parameters are operative in accounting for differences in the two contexts. Findings show cross-cultural variation along three of Hofstede and Hofstede’s communication styles, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femini¬nity and uncertainty avoidance/tolera-nce. The significance of the research lies in that it shows how commercial content producers register locally shared gender identity assumptions of the audience type they address.

11:45 → 12:00 10:45-11.00_Manipulating threat in medical discourse (Daphne Charalampopoulou)

Manipulating threat in medical discourse (Daphne Charalampopoulou)
Medical discourse has attracted the attention of scholars internationally, both in monolingual research and in translation. As in any social situation, a topic which has attracted particular attention is the relational dynamics between interlocutors, in this case expert/doctor and patient. When medical discourse is to be transferred cross-culturally, do the interpersonal dynamics between expert and patient shift or are they invariable? The aim of the study is to research variation in the relationship between expert-patient through Greek-English translated medical discourse. The study examined twenty medical leaflets of the “HYGEIA” private hospital, Athens, advertising services the hospital offers, with reference to various medical conditions. The analysis utilizes pragmatics, namely, im/politeness theory to examine threat awareness in the communicative situation and power distance between expert and patient. Findings show that the Greek version of the data heightens power distance and assumes higher threat awareness, which seems to be confirmed by a questionnaire addressing 15 bilingual respondents. The significance of the research lies in that it draws attention to intercultural variation in medical communication through translation, suggesting that translation data is another platform where medical communication may fruitfully be researched.

12:00 → 12:15 11:00-11:15_Translating Academia: Shaping the academic author (Chrysoula Gatsiou)

Translating Academia: Shaping the academic author (Chrysoula Gatsiou)
Discoursal norms and conventions are highly important in shaping academic texts. What we assume the identity of an academic author is like, is a matter of convention and may differ cross-culturally. Translation, in academic discourse contexts, allows a comparative analysis of cross-cultural norms potentially favoured in the exchange of specialized knowledge. The study examines assumed author identity in source and target versions of Carr’s book, What is History?, translated from English into Greek. Pragmatic features shaping the identity of academic author cross-culturally include Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov’s (2020) high-/low- ‘uncertainty avoidance’ and high-/low- ‘power distance’ variation, among others. Features identified in an etic approach to the data are verified with an emic approach (through a questionnaire). Findings suggest that there are significant differences in the way academia uses language cross-culturally. The study shows that Greek academic discourse reinforces certainty and establishes high tenor, thus generating assumptions about a superior social status of academic authors which are two highly favoured tendencies. The significance of the study lies in that it reflects culturally inscribed authorial style in local academic discourses which vary from English.

12:15 → 12:30 11:15-11:30_Shaping political ideology in the UK and Russian BBC Service (Pigi Haidouli)

Shaping political ideology in the UK and Russian BBC (Pigi Haidouli)
News reporting and translation in the news assume two layers of mediation, one into (the source) language and another into the target one. Political news disseminated by different institutions may change the ideological orientation of the news. The study aims at highlight¬ing the role of ideology in shaping Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s identities by the UK and Russian BBC News service through texts which are mostly comparable and partly parallel. The study uses im/politeness theory to analyse two pairs of English-Russian multimodal articles on Liz Truss’ becoming the new Prime Minister and her resignation and one pair of English-Russian articles on Rishi Sunak, becoming the new Prime Mini-ster. A multimodal analysis shows that the Russian BBC threatens Truss’ positive face, even at the time when she was given the mandate by the Conservative Party to become the new PM, which is not the case with the UK text. By contrast, Rishi Sunak is not openly in the centre of negative comments by the Russian news. Α questionnaire addressing bilingual or trilingual respondents mostly confir¬med the analysis results. The significance of the research lies in that news institutions disseminate an intended ideological attitude which significantly affects perception of the news by audiences.

12:30 → 12:45 11:30-11:45_Teaching cross-cultural pragmatics through AVT (Vasiliki Papakonstantinou)

Teaching cross-cultural pragmatics through AVT (Vasiliki Papakonstantinou)
The study attempts to explore how audiovisual translation (AVT) can introduce cross-cultural pragmatics to Greek learners of English. The data derive from the animated film Inside Out (Pixar 2015), namely, from the Greek subtitles and dubbing script of the first 45 minutes of the film, in which all the basic characters are introduced and the plot starts to unravel. The study takes dubbed dialogues to be a target-oriented data set, with the subtitles as an intermediate, constrained type of discourse where pragmatic shifts may be least visible or not at all. The research uses (a) the positive/negative politeness distinction as manifested through ‘inter¬personal proximity/distance’ between interlocutors, respectively (Brown and Levinson 1978, Sifianou 1992, Yule 1996), and (b) the ‘un/certainty avoidance’ communication style (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov 2010). The aim is to familiarize learners with the significance of pragmatic variation awareness and their use in EFL teaching. Both etic and emic approaches are applied: the analyst’s view is followed by a questionnaire addressing 18 bilingual participants who confirmed the findings of the study. Results show types of pragmatic variation across English and Greek: for instance, the subtitles (which are closer to the ST English script) showed less signs of positive politeness strategies and more uncertainty features, while dubbing, (which is more natural Greek discourse) manifested more positive politeness strategies and stronger uncertainty avoidance. Findings are significant because they allow learners to look beyond grammaticality, at pragmatic preference. There is fairly little research on using translation to advance pragmatic compe¬tence in learners of English and highlight how translation can advance cross cultural pragmatic awareness in EFL.

12:45 → 13:00 11:45-12:00_Character portrayal in Russian and Greek AVT modalities: The Rise of the Guardians (Alfia Khusainova)

Character portrayal in Russian and Greek AVT modalities: The Rise of the Guardians (Alfia Khusainova)
The study examines identity construction of characters in Greek and Russian AVT modalities (subtitling and dubbing), of the English animated film for children (The Rise of the Guardians 2012). The study attempts to determine whether and how translator awareness of the viewers’ cultural background and AVT modality interact to portray characters in target contexts. Results seem to show that the prevailing AV modality, in the cultural context, and the level of viewer familiarity with the character influences identity construction of it. Testi¬mo¬nies of film viewers and questionnaire data elicited from respon¬dents who are unfamiliar with analyzed AV characters confirm the analysis results. Viewers’ cultural background and the AVT modality seem to affect the way translators tend to represent characters’ identity, which is consistent with the previous research on the matter. The significance of the research lies in that it provides further insight into the way Greek and Russian AVT practices perceive and transform English AV texts, which may advance understanding of cross-cultural processes in AVT.

13:00 → 13:15 12:00-12:15_Aesop’s fable The Lion and the Mouse: a multicultural perspective (Olga Marinova)__CHAIR: Dr. ADA KORDA

Aesop’s fable The Lion and the Mouse: a multicultural perspective (Olga Marinova)
Fable scholarship (Lefkowitz 2006) has focused on adaptation of Aesop’s fables and viewed adaptation as making a story of one’s own, because Aesopic tradition has been highly adaptive as manifested in the various versions of fables. The study explores shifts in Aesop’s fable The Lion and the Mouse to highlight shifts in multicultural transformations of it, as manifested through translation. It examines Modern Greek (2003 and 2012), English (1996), Russian (2012) and Ukrainian (1990) versions of the fable to shape local perception of it. Analysis shows that translators (as storytellers) transform aspects of the fable in pragmatically significant ways: they add up to the adaptation process conforming to expectations their target audiences may have. The study concludes that the moral message of the fable reflects features pertaining to their respective audiences. The significance of research lies in that translation is seen as another layer of adaptation which a source text may undergo intra- and inter-culturally.

13:15 → 13:30 12:15-12:30_Story-telling perspectives in translating Aesop’s fables (Maria Kostaragkou)

Story-telling perspectives in translating Aesop’s fables (Maria Kostaragkou)
Aesop fables have been multiply adapted and translated over the years to meet the needs of intended addressees. The study selects two Modern Greek (1993, 2011) and two English (1991, 2013) versions of Aesop’s fable The Woodcutter and Mercury to trace intra- and inter-cultural variation in power distance awareness and addressee age-group identity. Pragmatic analysis of the four versions suggests that the Modern Greek versions of the fable seem to be more aware of the power differentials between Mercury and the Woodcutter, whereas the ones with dialogues and images better address younger audiences and focus on the woodcutter, thus, silencing the significance of Mercury’s figure. A questionnaire addressing 15 respondents confirmed (a) power distance variation interculturally in the way the narration progresses and (b) variation in addressee age group identity. The significance of research lies in that pragmatic aspects of meaning become interculturally visible in versions of the fable and draw attention to intended discoursal patterns.

13:30 → 13:45 12:30-12:45_Communication styles in translating Pushkin’s Fisherman and the Goldfish (Eleni Piperidou)

Communication styles in translating Pushkin’s Fisherman and the Goldfish (Eleni Piperidou)
The aim of the study is to examine pragmatic shifts in rendering Pushkin’s story ‘The fisherman and the goldfish’ in two Greek (1962, 2006) and two English (1962, 2011) versions, almost fifty years apart. As society may have been modified in the meantime, special attention is paid to the scale of power distance and social hierarchy awareness manifested in the story, and offensiveness, namely, whether they shifted, over the years. The study highlighted how the identities of the fisherman and his wife were portrayed. Both the analysis of the data and a questionnaire addressing Greek-English bilingual respondents, suggest heightened aggressiveness and offensiveness in the latest versions while hierarchy awareness was rather lowering. Multimodal material (pictures) of the two Greek versions also manifest a shift in the scale of hierarchy as shown through the verbal material. The present comparative analysis adds to the growing body of research that attempts to perceive the theoretical and cultural significance of shifts in children’s literature, conforming to shifting aspects of culure.

13:45 → 14:00 12:45-13:00_Gendered gaze and female identity in Greek versions of Romeo and Juliet (Dionysia Nikoloudaki)__CHAIR: DR. EFFIE FRAGKOU

Gendered gaze and female identity in Greek versions of Romeo and Juliet (Dionysia Nikoloudaki)
The study examines construction of female identity in four Greek translations of one of Shakespeare’s most renowned plays Romeo and Juliet (1597), namely, the earliest Greek version by Demetrios Vikelas (TTa, 1896), the second by Vasilis Rotas (TTb, 1989), the third by Errikos Bellies (TTc, 1993) and the most recent one by Despina Agelidou (TTd, 2005). The study examines shifts which reveal how gendered gaze is shaping female identity in the play. While the TTa translator tends to reduce offensive language that permeates the original and, at times, even omits sexual vocabulary which compromises the female gender roles, TTb translator trivializes degrading language. The language shifts which most prominently degrade female identity with crude language and sexual innuendos appear in TTc and TTd. Findings suggest that variation in shaping the identity of Juliet and her Nurse arises from different societal expectations and mentality at the time of staging. In TTc/TTd versions, however, when offensiveness was less restricted by theatre conventions, the study found that Belies’ (TTc 1993) male gaze allows higher offensiveness than Agelidou’s (TTd 2005) female gaze. If gender is a social construct (Butler 1990) female translators need to overcome a socially constructed barrier which perhaps blocks them from adjusting offensiveness in their work, which they can achieve through education and training. A questionnaire addressing 13 respondents seems to further validate the analysis of the data.

14:00 → 14:15 13:00-13:15_Disillusionment and impoverishment in the Greek version of Waiting for Godot (Aliki Kliafa)

Disillusionment and impoverishment in the Greek version of Waiting for Godot (Aliki Kliafa)
The study examines how impoverishment and disillusionment in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1949) have been rendered for the Greek stage. The play is a representative of Theater of the Absurd, premiered in Paris (1953), and was presented to Greek audiences in 1963. The study analyzes the 1984 Greek target version by A. Papathanassopoulou focusing on the portrayal of the protagonists’ impoverishment and disillusionment as Godot was not showing up. Both themes involve humor and foul language which respondents of a questionnaire assumed preferable. Findings show that both translator and respondents enjoyed expression of the protagonists’ outcast identity and frustration through offensiveness. The significance of the study lies in that target audiences may enjoy aspects of characters’ identities perhaps unsuspected in the ST, because local contexts may prioritize expressions which highlight impoverishment and frustration.

14:15 → 14:30 13:15-13:30_Relational dynamics in translating otherness, misogyny and female agency in Othellο (Stavroula Apostolopoulou)

Relational dynamics in translating otherness, misogyny and female agency in Othellο (Stavroula Apostolopoulou)
Although timelessly famous, Shakespeare’s Othello is mostly known as the play of jealousy, whereas 21st-century readings mostly foreground the themes of racism and misogyny. The present study examines relational dynamics cross-culturally discourse and how they developed over time. More specifically, the study analyses blackness, misogyny and female agency in two Greek target versions (1968, 2001) of the play. The study uses naturalistic evidence to show how target versions frame themes differently. It used a questionnaire addressing bilingual respondents with respect to how they perceive shifts in the two target versions. Findings show that the latest version introduces shifts in Iago’s and other characters’ discourse make-up, in how the item Moor is translated depending on who is using it, highlighting racism, or how sexist and misogynistic discourse emerges. The latest version never reaches the level of offensiveness of the earlier version, and questionnaire respondents confirm these findings. The significance of the study lies in that it shows translation to be a platform for variation in how identities are constructed and how translation informed by current readings of a literary piece reflects societal change.

14:30 → 14:45 13:30-13:45_The Winter’s Tale: Shaping the characters in translation (Iokasti-Rigopoula Stagaki)

The Winter’s Tale: Shaping the characters in translation (Iokasti-Rigopoula Stagaki)
The study examines two Greek target versions (1952, 2004) of Shakespeare’s latest plays The Winter’s Tale, (1611). The plot escalates quickly, in the first part of the play, which is a tragedy, with the second part being a comedy. The study examines how im/politeness changes perception of the characters in the two versions: male characters vary in the way they are constructed in terms of values like friendship, and vices like jealousy, while themes such as female submissiveness and gender relations also display intra-cultural variation. Analysis of samples of naturalistic data show variation in the way certain characters are constructed in the two versions, which is confirmed by experimental data elicited by a questionnaire addressing 13 bilingual respondents. The significance of the research lies in that pragmatics may provide a basis for the study of characters in a play and in that translation is a rich resource for this.

14:45 → 15:00 13:45-14:00_W.B. Yeats: Unrequited love and translator gender identity (Eleni Nasi)__CHAIR: Dr. ANNA HATZIDAKI

W. B. Yeats: Unrequited love and translator gender identity (Eleni Nasi)
William Butler Yeats has been widely recognized for his love poems. The study attempts to highlight how unrequited love in the poetry of Yeats is rendered in Greek. More specifically, it selects and analyzes three target versions of two poems (When You Are Old and No Second Troy) related to the theme of unrequited love, focusing on the themes of bitterness and expression of love. The study designed a questionnaire addressing Greek native respondents to evaluate potential variation in the type and intensity of feelings shaped in Greek target versions of the three poems. Findings show that (a) the earliest version is the closest to the ST and (b) out of the other two versions of the poems, there was a type of fluctuation rather associated with the gender of the translator: male translators seem to emphasize bitterness and empathy with the poet, while female translators mostly highlighted expression of love, demonstrating a kind of female solidarity towards the poet’s beloved. The research highlights parameters, such as time and translator gender, which affect meaning transfer on the theme of unreciprocated desire.

15:00 → 15:15 14:00-14:15_S.A. Yesenin: Shaping Disillusionment in love poetry translation (Eleni Sichidi)

Shaping disillusionment in love poetry translation (Eleni Sichidi)
Love poetry has been translated systematically and the question arises whether the implications following from a source version survive in target versions and how. The research aims at highlighting ways of shaping disillusionment in a love poem (1925) by Russian lyric poet Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (1895-1925), which has been translated into Greek (2015) and English (2018, 2020, 2021). The analyst’s view on how disillusionment is shaped in target versions of the poem is followed by a questionnaire (addressing 15 respondents) enquiring about the relational dynamics the poet seems to develop with the beloved, which differentiates target versions. Questionnaire results seem to confirm the initial findings on the implications the target versions generate. Results show that suffering and disillusionment are shaped differently in the four versions pertaining to the type of relationship the poet lover assumes with the beloved. They also reveal a different perception of what love is. The significance of the research lies in that it utilizes im/politeness theory to account for the relational dynamics between lovers which seem to be portrayed differently in the target versions translations and may be undercover in the source text. Hence, love poetry translators should be made aware of the psycho-social implications they allow through target options.

15:15 → 15:30 14:15-14:30_Carmilla: A study of horror and queerness in two Greek translations (Maria Episkopou)

Carmilla: A study of the horror and queerness in two Greek translations (Maria Episkopou)
Recent years have brought about a rise in gothic subcultures, a revisitation of older fiction with diverse elements, an increase in classic gothic fiction studies and an interest in the analysis of its elements. One of the less researched novels, in Greece, is Carmilla (1872) by Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, which involves elements of gothic horror and queer sexuality. This study analyses two target versions of the novel that are around thirty years apart (1986 and 2015) to identify how translation has handled the gothic and queer elements overtime. Questionnaires submitted to the linguistic insight of native Greek respondents confirm that the latest version tends to focus on the psychological and more violent aspects of the self, whereas the first one highlights the supernatural element and is generally less threatening. Likewise, the latest version highlights queerness where the earlier arouses a much friendlier connotation between female protagonists. The significance of the research lies in that Carmilla is a rather under-researched work in the Greek target context, and in that it demonstrates a gap in horror studies in terms of its reception as a genre and its exploration of queer sexuality. Furthermore, the research highlights how societal values impact translation approaches with respect to certain themes and become reflective of their eras. Last but not least, the study leaves space for further work in the subject of psychological elements (and perhaps medical terminology) in target versions, which signal a shift in perspective.

15:30 → 15:45 14:30-14:45_Οn the interplay of pragmatics and audiovisual translation (Nikos Stamatoulakis)

Οn the interplay of pragmatics and audiovisual translation (Nikos Stamatoulakis)
The present thesis seeks to explore the interplay of pragmatics and audiovisual translation in the modern era of streaming television, and the possible ramifications of subtitling on identity construal. The character of Jessica Jones, a superhero-private investigator, and her distinct pragmalinguistic choices as regards im/politeness are discussed, and the official Greek subtitles for the series are examined. The main aim of this analysis is to determine whether specific elements of subtitling, like its spatiotemporal constraints and reading speed, as well as toning down of emotionally charged language have an effect on elements of characterization expressed through language. The findings showed that the im/politeness choices of Jessica were transferred to the target language without significant changes and, consequently, no significant effect on characterization. However, this can largely be attributed to the fact that reading speed limits were quite frequently exceeded, and condensation was not always a priority, as it usually is in subtitling. This raises some questions on whether viewing experience could be hindered. This thesis is an attempt to contribute to the ever-growing field of research in the interface of audiovisual translation and pragmatics, which remains rather limited (Desilla, 2019).

16:00 → 18:00 15:00-17.00__ L U N C H B R E A K

17:45 → 18:00 COFFEE TIME: You are welcome to join us for coffee online, at 15:45 (Italian/Spanish time)/16:45 (Greek time)]

18:00 → 18:30 17:00-17:30_Specialised Translation and Translation Services Market: A View from Apulia (Angelo Monaco)__CHAIR: Dr. ELENA MANCA

Specialised Translation and Translation Services Market: A View from Apulia (Angelo Monaco)
My paper reports on the partial results of an investigation into the state of affairs of the market of specialised translation services in Apulia (south-east Italy). In the first part of my paper, I will illustrate the trends of a survey of the translation market. The survey takes into account the type of clients, the most in-demand languages, the main linguistic domains, and the use of the CAT tools. In the second part, instead, I will focus on the data of two needs analysis questionnaires addressed to the first-year students of the Master’s Degree in “Specialised Translation” at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro”. The questionnaires include personal information, skills, motivation, and expectations, thus providing a way to map the future translators’ needs. Finally, I will discuss and relate the trends of the market survey and the data of the needs analysis questionnaires in order to propose a didactic protocol where market requests and formative needs may converge.

18:30 → 19:00 17:30-18:00_Teaching English geographical vocabulary with the use of a corpus-based list and pedagogical translation (Andreja Drašler)

Teaching English Geographical Vocabulary with the Use of a Corpus-based List and Pedagogical Translation (Andreja Drašler).
My PhD research aims to deepen our understanding of how to improve geography students’ English vocabulary, addressing both what specialised vocabulary to teach and how to teach it. The purpose of this study is two-fold: to create, for the first time, a specialised vocabulary list, and to examine the role of pedagogical translation in the context of English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP), in the Reading and Interpretation of English Technical Texts for Geographers course at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. First, I will form specialised corpora of scientific and professional texts in physical geography and human geography, to ensure appropriately broad coverage. For corpus analysis, the online corpus tool Sketch Engine will be employed to extract keywords (single words and multi-word terms), and serve as the basis for designing a specialised vocabulary list and other teaching materials for the Reading and Interpretation of English Technical Texts for Geographers course. The second research aim will be to examine whether geography students perform better at tasks testing their knowledge of specialised vocabulary in English when taught with pedagogical translation. A mixed-method approach will be employed to investigate the role of pedagogical translation in vocabulary instruction. Pedagogical intervention will be implemented to test the effects of pedagogical translation as opposed to a monolingual approach when teaching vocabulary, based on a one-group pretest-posttest research design. As yet, no study has examined the effects of pedagogical translation on specialised vocabulary gains in the context of ESAP.

19:00 → 19:30 18:00-18:30_ABC STEREO Project: Real-time subtitling to facilitate communication between healthcare professionals and hearing-impaired and foreign patients (Ottavia Carlino)__CHAIR: Dr. CARLOS PRADO-ALONSO

ABC STEREO Project: Real-time subtitling to facilitate communication between healthcare professionals and hearing-impaired and foreign patients (Ottavia Carlino)
Communication between healthcare professionals and patients has to be effective and timely. Though, it becomes particularly difficult when healthcare professionals attend hearing-impaired or foreign patients, or in the presence of physical barriers that hinder listening. Different projects looked at the specific problems of the two-way communication between deaf sign language users and hearing users (Sobhan et al., 2019; Tsimpida et al., 2018), as well as communication between healthcare professionals and foreign patients (Schouten et al., 2020; Baraldi et al., 2021; Anderson et al., 2021). Also, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, studies on communication difficulties in the presence of physical barriers have been launched (Chodosh et al., 2020; Trecca et al., 2020; Rahne et al., 2021). Nonetheless, there are no studies specifically addressing commu¬nication problems with hearing-impaired people or people with temporary hearing loss, nor are there systems designed to facilitate communication between health professionals and such users. For this reason, the ABC Stereo project, launched in January 2022 in Italy, aims to find a common solution for three different groups of patients: patients with chronic hearing loss (the elderly) or temporary hearing loss (those who have suffered an injury to the auditory system), but also foreign patients (whenever an interpreter is not available), and those who are required to communicate through physical barriers (as they are either contagious or septic). Although these patients are widely different, we believe that a common solution to their problems can be found: using automatic voice recognition to create real-time subtitles could represent a step forward towards the esta¬blishment of a truly symmetrical relationship between healthcare professionals and patients. In addition, the use of voice recognition combined with voice-to-text technology would enable the whole conversation to be transcribed for possible future use. The project consists of five main phases: the theoretical study of real-time subtitling and healthcare professional-patient communication; the data gathering through questionnaires and interviews with healthcare professionals and patients in order to identify the main problems and interest in a new form of communication; the identification of the voice recognition and subtitling technologies best suited to healthcare contexts; the on-site testing in at least one hospital unit and one nursing home; finally, the identification and resolution of possible shortcomings and failures of the system and the awareness raising among healthcare managers and staff on the benefits it could bring.

19:30 → 19:36 18:30-18:36_Closing of the Symposium__Dr. ANGELO MONACO, Department of Humanistic Research and Innovation, University of Bari Aldo Moro

19:36 → 19:42 18:36-18:42_Closing the Symposium_Dr. SOFIA MALAMATIDOU, Department of English Language and Literature NKUA and University of Birmingham, UK.