Biography

As an undergraduate student of English at the University of Athens I was drawn enough to the subject of translation to later pursue postgraduate studies in this field. I obtained an MSc (with distinction) and a doctorate degree from the University of Manchester after securing a PhD scholarship from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and a stipend from the Language Engineering Department at UMIST. Before joining Surrey in 2006 I worked as a corpus assistant for the Translational English Corpus (CTIS Manchester), as a research associate for a poetry translation project (Newcastle University) and as a part-time Greek translation lecturer (University of Salford).
Currently I am the Programme Director for three Masters programmes: MA in Translation Studies with Intercultural Communication, MA in Audiovisual Translation, MA in Monolingual Subtitling and Audio Description.

Research Interests

During the last few years I have developed an interest in translation as an act of intercultural mediation, with a special emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. To date, I have been an examiner for four PhD theses (one as internal and three as external examiner); I am also a reviewer for the Research Grants Council (Hong Kong).

Current projects: My current research interests lie in studying the way in which translation can foreground aspects of identity according to material, political or semiotic opportunities available in a broader macro-context. For this reason I have examined the mobilizing potential of translations in social movements, the deconstructing discourse of transsexual characters in audiovisual material and the cultural translation strategies of narrating subjects in migrant literature.
Earlier projects: Initially I dealt with the translation-context correlation from a strictly linguistic point of view with humour in screen translation as a case in point. In my doctoral research I turned my attention to broader issues of social agency, publication trends and censorship, relying on conceptual tools from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological work. In my study on Brecht’s works under the Greek dictatorship I adopted a multi-genre approach to translations of certain poetry collections, political essays and plays of this major European thinker, poet and playwright in order to show how translation can be pressed to the service of protest.

PhD Supervision (principal supervisor)

Michelle Wu. The Translation of Taiwanese Tongzhi and Ku-er Literature.

PhD Supervision (co-supervisor, with Margaret Rogers)

Artemis Lamprinou. A Study of the Cultural Variations in the Expression of Basic Emotions in British English to Greek Translations of Contemporary Bestseller Romances.  
Selin Kayhan. A Bourdieusian Perspective on Translators in Turkey: Examining the Role of Socio-economic, Cultural and Political Environment.

Publications

Books:
2011 Co-editor (with Margaret Rogers). Translation and Opposition. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. More information and table of contents. 

Articles in refereed journals:

(in preparation) “Migrant Bitter Wit: Translating a Coping Mechanism in Gazmend Kapllani’s A Short Border Handbook.” 
(under consideration) “Translation as (Mis)Understanding: Albanian Migrant Literature in Greek.” Target.
2012 “Dude (Looks Like a Lady): Hijacking Transsexual Identity in the Subtitled Version of Strella by Panos Koutras.” The Translator 18(1): 45-75.
2009 “Translating ‘Self’ and ‘Others’: Waves of Protest Under the Greek Junta.” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture 2(1): 25-47.
2009 “Framing Brecht and the Greek Student Movement (1972-1973).” Meta 52(2): 233-247.
2007 “Translation as Social Action: Brecht's Political Texts in Greek.” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction 20(1): 113-140.
2006 “Fear and Misery of the Third Reich… and the Greek Junta” Special issue of Norwich Papers: The Role of Translation in National and Global Contexts Volume 14: 41-56.
2005 “Brecht in Dark Times. Translations of His Works Under the Greek Junta (1967-1974).” Target 17(1): 93-110.
2004 “Towards a Model of Describing Humour Translation. A Case Study of the Greek Subtitled Versions of Airplane! and Naked Gun.” Meta 49(4): 822-842.
2002 Book review article (with Jeroen Vandaele). “Techniques of Satire: the Case of Saltykov-Scedrin (Emil Draitser), Linguistic Theories of Humour (Salvatore Attardo), The Sense of Humour: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic (Willibald Ruch), Jokes and their Relations to Society (Christie Davies), Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis (Salvatore Attardo), The Basic Humour Process: A Cognitive Shift Theory and the Case Against Incongruity (Robert Latta).” Special Issue of The Translator. Translating Humour 8(2): 424-441.

Chapters in edited works:
2011        “Systems and the Boundaries of Agency: Translation as a Site of Opposition.” In Dimitris Asimakoulas and Margaret Rogers (eds) Translation and Opposition. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 1-36.
2009       “Rewriting.” In Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha (eds) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 241-246.
2006       “Translation as a Means of Resistance: Paratexts in Translations of Brecht's Works Under the Greek Junta (1967-1974).” In Sameh Fekry Hanna (ed.). The CTIS Occasional Papers III. Manchester: The University of Manchester, 78-103.
2002        “Subtitling Humour and the Humour of Subtitling.” In Keith Harvey (ed.). The CTIS Occasional Papers II. Manchester: The University of Manchester, 71-84.

Sample conferences and presentations

11.01.2012
Imperial College London. Invited speaker: Department of Humanities – “Strategies of Cultural Translation in Migrant Literature.”
14.03.2011
Kings College London. Invited speaker: Centre for Hellenic Studies Seminars – “Fear and Misery of the Greek Junta. Translation as an Interface of Cultural Protest”

22-24.04.2010
New York University. The Fifth Biennial Conference of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association (ATISA). ‘The Sociological Turn In Translation and Interpreting Studies’, New York. “Waves of Protest and Translation”
06.10-10.10.2008
Guest speaker at Hennan Normal University and Xinyang University. Series of talks: “Norms in Translation”, “Academic Writing for Translation Students: When in Rome do as the Romans Do”, “The Many Faces of Advertisement Translation”, “Censorship, Social Movements and Translation: Greece under the Colonels (1967-1974)”, “Translating the Familiar and the Quaint: Tourism”
15-17.05.2008
Universidad de León. I Congreso Internacional de Censura y Traducción: Receptión Textual en la Europa del Sur/First Conference on Censorship and Translation: Text Reception in Southern Europe, León. “Poetry in Dark Times. Brecht and the Greek Junta”
22.11.2007
University of Oxford. Guest speaker - Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature. “Framing Social Movements and Translation”
19.10.2007
University of Yale. Invited contributor to the panel on the Greek junta. The 20th Modern Greek Studies Association Symposium. “Fear and Misery of the Greek Junta: Framing Brecht under the Colonels”

Teaching

I teach the following undergraduate and postgraduate modules:  

• TRA1025 “Introduction to Translation and Interpreting Studies” (HE1 module)
• TRA2050 “Translation Quality Assurance” (HE2 module)
• TRA3029 “Introduction to Translation Theory” (HE3 module)
• TRAM057 “Translation Issues II” (MA module)
• TRAM058 “Translation of Persuasive Texts” (MA module)
• TRAM178 “Translating Cultures” (MA module)
• Translation Studies Seminars (MA PDP-related event, co-ordinator)

Supervision Interests

My supervision interests on postgraduate and research level include the following:

• Humour theory
• Translation as intercultural mediation
• Translation of advertisements/tourism
• Paratextual elements  
• Translation agency/ideology
• Cultural policy-making/questioning
• Translation history
• Translation and social movements

Editorial Work and Affiliations

I am a member of the editorial board for New Voices in Translation and I have been a reviewer for the following publishing houses/journals active in the area of translation: Routledge, St Jerome Publishing, The Translator, Meta, Intralinea, Synthesis, Translation Studies Abstracts, Translation Studies Bibliography.

I am a member of the Modern Greek Studies Association and the Hellenic Association of Translators and Interpreters (HATI).