Research activities
The ELLIT Unit brings together researchers from different fields of language studies, namely translation studies, linguistics and literature. The Unit’s various PhDs and research projects that are underway, as well as its many publications, show that these different disciplines can interact and thus enhance each other.
a) Translation Studies
The study of translation and interpreting is a central component of the Unit, with a particular focus on experiential research that helps to bridge the gap between academic researchers and professionals. The purpose of the research is often to formulate proposals to improve teaching methods and tools for English language training, translation and interpreting.
b) Linguistics
Several members of the Unit have a strong background in linguistics, both from a theoretical and descriptive perspective and from an applied perspective. The focus of the Unit’s experiential research is placed on semantic, pragmatic and syntactic phenomena – both synchronically and diachronically – as well as on linguistic variation.
c) Literature
Several members of the Unit have defended their theses in the field of literature or literary translation. Their experience and research interests focus on English-language literature in the broadest sense, whether British, American, or more broadly from the Commonwealth and the English-speaking world, as well as on a variety of periods and authors (from Jane Austen to contemporary American authors), both in fiction and in testimonial literature. More recently, their work has expanded into the fields of adaptation (inter- and transmedia) and comparative literature.
Thesis themes and subjects (including ongoing theses):
Loïc de Faria Pires (Associate Professor): translation technologies; post-editing of machine translation; quality assessment in translation; localisation and audiovisual translation; institutional translation.
Lobke Ghesquière (Associate Professor): functional-cognitive linguistics; English linguistics, English-Dutch contrastive linguistics; degree modifiers; grammaticalisation; (inter)subjectification.
Audrey Louckx (Associate Professor): English literature, comparative literature, (film) adaptation, intermediality, transmediality, contemporary American literature and culture, animation.
Jesse Marion (PhD student): quantity and degree modifiers (in English, French and translation).
Charlène Meyers (research and teaching associate): specialised translation, specialised language, cognitive metaphors, sight translation, quantitative linguistics.
Christine Michaux (full professor): terminology, specialised translation, specialised language, conceptualisation, discourse analysis.
Eponine Moreau (PhD student): subtitling of taboo words.
Faye Troughton (PhD student): the exclamatory sentence (in French, English and translation).
Mathieu Veys (PhD student): Cognitive processes in translation and interpreting.