Emotions

Emotions are elusive and incredibly difficult to define and measure. In a nutshell, they can be described as complex psychological states involving three distinct components: a physiological response, a subjective experience, and a behavioral response. The nature of each component and how they interrelate is a common source of contention among researchers, pointing to insurmountable difficulties to reach a consensus definition of emotion.

In contrast, greater agreement is found on the role emotion plays in our daily lives. Emotion is widely recognized as a relevant and crucial part of human experience with the power to rule our lives. We make judgements and decisions based on our emotions or the feelings of those who matter to us. They influence how we react to a particular stimulus, but also our social and work interactions, our health and general well-being. Recognition of their moving power has drawn attention to them as potential efficiency drivers in many different areas, including Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS).

Efforts to define the role of emotions in translation and interpreting processes have been duplicated in the last decade. Cognitive Translation Studies (CTIS) have built a model of translation and interpreting that integrates emotional phenomena inasmuch as cognitive events (Rojo López 2019). Emotions have been explored as the result of the translator’s and interpreter’s appraisal of the ST or discourse, an incidental affect state induced by the surrounding context, a feeling that can be regulated by the translator’s or interpreter’s own personal and professional experience, and the result of the audience’s appraisal of the target product (see Rojo 2017).

But despite the huge progress made, challenges still outweigh achievements in research on emotion in CTIS. This entry addresses some of the most urgent needs in the study of emotion by zeroing in on four issues crucial for research: What is the nature of emotions? How can they be defined? What is the best way to measure them? and What future research is needed?