Research on the use of immersive technologies to foster intercultural communication and improve translation performance [Thematic tracks in Languages for Specific Purposes]

Translators and technical communicators must be prepared to use immersive technologies as they work. Visualization has been shown to help translators improve their performance as it provides a more concrete understanding of topic and content (Kußmaul, 2005). In addition, use of augmented and/or virtual reality (AR, VR) has been shown to help technical communicators develop intercultural communication competence (Tham et al., 2018). However, understanding of immersive technologies has not kept pace with the full potential of their benefits and perils (Craig & Georgieva, 2018). Here we ask: How might students examine and/or use immersive technologies as a means to foster intercultural communication and improve translation performance? In this presentation we share two research projects on the design, deployment, and study of student use of immersive technologies as a means to foster intercultural communication and improve translation understanding. Project one focuses on multiple years of TAPP collaborations in which U.S. students at the University of Minnesota (UMN) collaborated with translation teams at the University of Trieste (UT) in Italy. Students used immersive technologies including Google Cardboard and marker-based AR, and most recently, developed visualizations of translation journeys. Project two details two years of U.S.-Canada collaboration in which U.S. students from multiple institutions curated collections on emerging technologies and translation for the digital repository The Fabric of Digital Life (Iliadis & Pedersen, 2018) housed at Ontario Tech University in Canada. Here we share student collections of artifacts on immersive technologies, both emergent and commercialized, with specific focus on translation. Together, these pedagogical deployments provide a framework for advancing intercultural communication and translation performance through use and examination of immersive technologies.