Sciences. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our article.

The modern translation workplace is characterized by intensive human-computer interaction and heavy use of language technology. In such settings, translators are subject to temporal and spatial constraints that can be mitigated or accentuated by good and poor ergonomic design, respectively. In the research reported here, an ergonomic framework encompassing physical, cognitive, and organizational aspects of the workplace has been used to gain insights into the situated activity of translation. The multi-method approach includes screen and video recordings, interviews, and ergonomic assessments at the workplace. The results of a case from our corpus suggest that apparently minor disturbances can have a negative effect on the efficiency of the translation process and potentially impact job satisfaction and even health.

Many factors can affect the translation and interpreting process, but the quality of source texts has been explicitly identified as an issue in surveys of professional translators and interpreters as well as in recent workplace studies. If translators and interpreters encounter resistance in carrying out their tasks, for example by difficulties in extracting meaning from non-native English input, then flow can be interrupted and performance affected. In this paper, we explore how English as a lingua franca (ELF) input could potentially increase the cognitive load not only for translators and interpreters but also for other multilinguals. We describe the range of methods that can be used to measure the cognitive effort and stress associated with processing ELF input and explain the challenges that can be encountered when researchers are committed to using authentic ELF material to make comparisons under relatively controlled but ecologically valid conditions. One of the driving motivators for this type of research is to understand how interpreters and translators deploy their expertise to deal with ELF input in work settings in order to draw inferences about strategies for other segments of the population.

No abstract