Risku, Hanna, Rogl, Regina and Milosevic, Jelena, eds. (2019): Translation Practice in the Field. Current research on socio-cognitive processes. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 184 p.

Before this, let me remind the reader that the TPRWs started in 2009. The very first TPRW was organised by Suzanne Göpferich at the University of Graz – interestingly, the same university that hosted the TPRW5. At that moment, Göpferich had no intention to make of the TPRWs a serial event. She then organised a second one in 2012, after moving to the Justus Liebig University Giessen. These two initial workshops were conceived by Göpferich as research project disseminating activities. After this Central European birth and early childhood, the TPRWs migrated to Spanish Canary Islands, namely to the Grand Canary Island: the TPRW3 and TPRW4 were organised by the PETRA Research group and led by Ricardo Muñoz in Puerto de Mogán and in Las Palmas, respectively. The next TPRW (5) came back to Graz, thanks to Hanna Risku. The, let say, Spanish adolescence of TPRWs was then continued by Ana Rojo, a member of PETRA Research group (extinguished today) who offered the TPRW6 in her University of Murcia. Probably, the TPRWs will live their mature age somewhere between an Italian village Bertinoro, next to the University of Bologna, Forlì campus. This will be a steady site but will alternate with other hosts every other year. Bertinoro sessions will cover core issues of Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies, whereas meetings elsewhere will focus on a certain topic or research strand. The structure and ways, however, will remain unaltered (Muñoz, personal communication, 12 May 2020). Coming back to the book under review, it comprises an introductory paper authored by the three co-editors (the only paper without abstract nor keywords), and seven papers divided into three sections: (1) new insights into work-related processes in different translation/interpreting settings; (2) workplace, technology and ergonomics; and (3) translation expertise and knowledge in practice. This division into three thematic sections and its rationale are presented only in the introductory paper, and not in the table of contents opening the book, which, in my opinion, is quite regrettable. A subject index is presented at the end of the book (p. 183-184), where key concepts are listed in alphabetical order, with corresponding pages. All the authors are affiliated to European universities, except for one representative of the Kent State University in USA, Erik Angelone. While presenting the general scope of the book and its core content, the co-editors state in their introductory chapter that: “This volume focuses on recent research that studies translators, interpreters and translation project managers in their authentic work situations and environments, i.e., as embedded in a specific temporal and spatial context” (p. 1). As a consequence of the methodological choice – aimed at directing the researcher’s view on “authentic work situations” and capturing the whole image of this situation in a kind of workplace photography (for the concept of methodological photography, see: Kuznik and Verd 2010: 37-38, Kuznik 2016: 11) – an ethnographic approach is obviously needed and, therefore, highlighted (p. 1): The general content of the book can also be defined according to the keywords used by the authors. While analysing the 45 keywords of the seven papers, we obtain the following map of topics addressed in the volume: (1) fields and subfields of knowledge and research: cognitive translatology, sociology of translation, practice theory, workplace research, workplace studies, translation process research; cognitive ergonomics, organizational ergonomics; (2) methods of inquiry applied: ethnography, autoethnography, eye tracking; (3) components of translation practices spotted: translation practice, deliberate practice, translation process, workplace, translation constraints, terminology search; (4) types of translation discussed: literary translation, transcreation, advertising, simultaneous interpreting, church interpreting; (5) people at work surveyed: professional translators, project managers; …