Situated cognition approach in translation studies: origins and heuristic potential

The article analyzes the explanatory possibilities of the situated cognition approach to translation study on the basis of the theoretical apparatus developed in the Viennese translation school of Professor H. Risku. The relevance of the study is determined by the appeal to the analysis of the specialized translation process in the authentic context of the functioning of the main subject in the modern translation market, i.e. a translation bureau. Incorporating the research techniques from the early stages of cognitive science development (theory of information processing based on symbol manipulation and neural networks analysis within the framework of connectionism), the approach under consideration is based on the modern concept of extended situated embodied cognition, which, as applied to translation studies, provides new arguments in favor of transition from interpretation of the interaction “human - text” to the study of multimedia communication of a subjects group in the translation networks’ composition, which have arisen as a result of outsourcing processes in the translation industry. The features of cooperative interaction between a team of translators and experts, as well as artifacts in the process of translation text generation using information technologies, are demonstrated. The practical application of the situated cognition approach to the analysis of the participants’ activities in translation cooperative networks (customer company, technical editor, translation bureau, external translation bureau, translator) is especially relevant in the context of glocalization in the emerging Russian translation market.