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SMART Team

The SMART project is led by the University of Surrey in collaboration with a consortium of universities and industry stakeholders.

The team at Surrey includes researchers from the Centre for Translation Studies and from the School of Psychology: Dr Elena Davitti (Principal Investigator), Dr Simon Evans (Co-Investigator) and Dr Hayley Dawson, Dr Louise Fryer, Dr Zoe Moores, Dr Anna-Stiina Wallinheimo and Dr Tomasz Korybski (Research Fellows). The international research team includes Dr Pablo Romero-Fresco (University of Vigo, Spain), Annalisa Sandrelli (UNINT, Italy) and Prof Emerita Lucile Desblache (University of Roehampton, UK).

The advisory board is comprised of academic members, Prof Franz Pöchhacker (University of Vienna), Prof Aline Remael (University of Antwerp), and Prof Jan-Louis Kruger (Macquarie University), and industrial members, Sky, Ai-Media, and SUB-TI. Their role is to provide research-led and professional input respectively

Research Team

Dr Elena Davitti

Principal Investigator

Dr Simon Evans

Co-Investigator

Annalisa Sandrelli

Co-Investigator

Dr Pablo Romero-Fresco

Co-Investigator

Prof Lucile Desblache

Co-Investigator

Dr Anna-Stiina Wallinheimo

Research Fellow

Dr Tomasz Korybski

Research Fellow

Dr Zoe Moores

Research Fellow

Dr Hayley Dawson

Research Fellow

Dr Louise Fryer

Research Fellow

Advisory Board

Prof Aline Remael

Prof Jan-Louis Kruger

Prof Franz Pöchhacker

Ai-Media

Sky

Sub-ti

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Dr Elena Davitti
Centre for Translation Studies
University of Surrey

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smartproject@surrey.ac.uk

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Dr Elena Davitti

Elena Davitti is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the Centre for Translation Studies, University of Surrey in the UK, where she has been working since 2013. She holds a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the University of Manchester (2012) and an MA in Conference Interpreting from the University of Bologna at Forlì (2008). Her research focuses on interactional and multimodal dynamics of spoken language transfer across languages, particularly interpreter-mediated communication (both face-to-face and video-mediated) and hybrid modalities of real-time speech-to-text via speech recognition (e.g. interlingual respeaking and semi-automated workflows). Elena is leading the ESRC-funded ‘SMART’ project (Shaping Multilingual Access with Respeaking Technology, 2020-2022, ESRC UK, ES/T002530/1) on interlingual respeaking with a consortium of national and international academic and industrial collaborators. Elena has also published on multimodal dynamics of interpreter-mediated interaction and she has been co-investigator on several EU-funded projects on technologies applied to interpreting, particularly video-mediated interpreting (AVIDICUS 3, SHIFT in Orality) and innovations in interpreter education (EVIVA). Elena has also published extensively on authoritative journals such as Interpreting, Journal of Pragmatics, Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Qualitative Research, Intralinea and is serving on boards of several on the boards of projects and organisations in her fields of research (e.g. GALMA, IATIS, ARTIS).

Dr Simon Evans

Simon completed a PhD at UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Sq. in 2011, investigating social decision-making processes in schizophrenia and healthy controls. His postdoctoral training was at University of Sussex, using MRI to explore how genetic factors affect brain activity patterns and cognitive performance. In January 2017 Simon joined Surrey as a Lecturer in Neuroscience. His primary research interest is in investigating factors affecting cognitive change across the lifespan. Techniques include the use of brain imaging and physiological monitoring.

Annalisa Sandrelli

Before joining UNINT as Lecturer in English Language and Translation, Annalisa Sandrelli taught at the universities of Trieste and Bologna/Forlì and was a Marie Curie TMR Fellow and Lector in Italian at the University of Hull. Over the years she has taught a variety of modules in Interpreting, Respeaking, Audiodescription and Audiovisual Translation and has published widely on interpreting studies, AVT, legal English, and Computer Assisted Interpreter Training (CAIT). Current projects: ¡Sub!: Localisation Workflows that Work (coordinator; UNINT-Roehampton); EOMC – Eurolect Observatory Multilingual Corpus (English section coordinator); on SMART – Shaping Multilingual Access with Respeaking Technology (International Co-Investigator); LTA – Live Text Access (Sub-ti Quality Manager); ILSA – Interlingual Live Subtitling for Access (Member of the Advisory Board). Research groups: LARIM, Eurolect Observatory; CLC (Centro di Linguistica su Corpora; GALMA.

Dr Pablo Romero-Fresco

Pablo Romero Fresco is Ramón y Cajal researcher at Universidade de Vigo (Spain) and Honorary Professor of Translation and Filmmaking at the University of Roehampton (UK). He is the author of the books Subtitling through Speech Recognition: Respeaking (Routledge) and Accessible Filmmaking: Integrating translation and accessibility into the filmmaking process (Routledge). He is the leader of the international research centre GALMA (Galician Observatory for Media Access), for which he is currently coordinating several international projects on media accessibility, including ILSA: Interlingual Live Subtitling for Access, funded by the EU Commission. Pablo is also a filmmaker. His first documentary, Joining the Dots (2012), was screened during the 69th Venice Film Festival and was used by Netflix as well as film schools around Europe to raise awareness about audiodescription.

Prof. Lucile Desblache

Lucile Desblache is Professor Emerita in Translation and Transcultural Studies at the University of Roehampton. Her research focuses mainly on the translation of musical texts and she is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Translating Music project. She is the founded editor of Jostrans, The Journal of Specialised Translation, of which she was editor-in-chief between 2004 and 2019. As the Director of the Centre for Translation and Transcultural Studies (2009-2020), she has led, overlooked or taken part in a wide variety of interdisciplinary research projects, which span Audiovisual Translation, Environmental Studies and Animal Studies. Her most recent monograph, Music and Translation: New Mediations in the Digital Age was published by Macmillan/Springer in 2019.

Dr Anna-Stiina Wallinheimo

Anna-Stiina completed a PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Surrey in 2019, investigating the effects of evaluative pressure on working memory and mathematical problem solving. After finishing her PhD, Anna-Stiina worked as a Teaching Fellow in Psychology at the University of Surrey and at Birbeck, University of London. She is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the SMART Project, focussing on the cognitive battery of the investigation. Anna-Stiina has a particular interest in how cognitive performance may be negatively affected by stressful situations and whether interactivity could be used to alleviate these effects.

Dr Tomasz Korybski

Tomek holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from UWE Bristol, and his background is in sociolinguistics, interpreting, and interpreter training. After years of practising as a conference interpreter and teaching interpretation (at the University of Warsaw), he joined Surrey’s Centre for Translation Studies as Research Fellow in 2019. His research interests include hybrid workflows in live interlingual communication, respeaking, speech-to-text technology as well as remote simultaneous interpreting technology. After completing a pilot project focusing on a hybrid workflow for live interlingual communication featuring respeaking (MATRIC), Tomek joined the SMART team in late 2021 to contribute to the data analysis and further stages of the project. 

Zoe Moores

Zoe Moores is a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Roehampton, in which she explored how respeaking could be introduced into the live event setting in the UK to broaden the access provided both for d/Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audience members and the wider audience, and what additional skills and training would be required for those involved. She worked closely with the charity Stagetext to co-ordinate the project. Zoe is a member of GALMA, the Galician Observatory for Media Accessibility, and is involved in a number of accessibility-related projects. She worked as a respeaker and access subtitler at Red Bee Media, Ericsson and continues to subtitle and respeak on a freelance basis.

Dr Hayley Dawson

Hayley Dawson is a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey contributing to the ESRC-funded SMART project. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Roehampton, in which she explored training for interlingual respeakers to provide access for a wide audience. She is a member of the international research group GALMA and contributes to delivering training courses for pre-recorded subtitling and interlingual respeaking. Hayley also works as a freelance language and accessibility specialist and provides services in Spanish to English translation, subtitling, respeaking and training.

Dr Louise Fryer

Dr. Louise Fryer is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Surrey, working on SMART. She has a doctorate in Experimental Psychology and was Senior teaching fellow (2017 – 2020) in the Centre for Translation Studies at University College London, convening the course in Audio Description as part of an MA in audiovisual translation. She is a freelance audio describer and was a partner in the research project ADLAB PRO (2016 – 19). Her research interests include accessibility and immersion in audiovisual media. She is the author of An Introduction to Audio Description: A Practical Guide published by Routledge.

Prof. Dr. Aline Remael

Prof. Dr. Aline Remael is Professor Emeritus in Translation Theory and Audiovisual Translation at the Department of Applied Linguistics/Translation and Interpreting of the University of Antwerp. She is the founder of OPEN, the departmental Expertise Centre for Accessible Media and Culture, former Head of Department and chief editor of Linguistica Antverpiensia NS – Themes in Translation Studies. Her main research interests and publications are in Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility, as well as Translation Theory and, more specifically, the study of translation as a multimodal practice. Her most recent publication (Routledge 2020) is Subtitling: Concepts and Practices, co-authored with Prof. Jorge Díaz Cintas. She has been a partner in numerous European accessibility projects (ADLAB, ADLAB-PRO, ACT and ILSA) and in 2018 she received the ESIST Jan Ivarsson Award for invaluable services to the field of audiovisual translation.

Prof. Jan-Louis Kruger

Jan-Louis Kruger is Professor and Head of the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia where he also teaches in AVT. His research interests include studies on the reception and processing of language in multimodal contexts as well as cognitive translation studies. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Audiovisual Translation (JAT), as well as on the advisory boards of a number of audiovisual translation conferences. His recent projects use eye tracking to investigate the processing of subtitles at different presentation rates and when there is a secondary visual task. He is particularly interested in the processing of text (reading) when it has to compete for cognitive resources with auditory and visual information (such as reading subtitles in film).

Prof Franz Pöchhacker

Franz Pöchhacker is Professor of Interpreting Studies in the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Vienna. Trained as a conference interpreter in Vienna and Monterey (A: German, B: English, C: Spanish), he worked as a freelance conference and media interpreter for some 30 years. He has done research on simultaneous conference interpreting as well as media interpreting and community-based interpreting in healthcare and asylum settings, and published on general issues of interpreting studies as a discipline. He has lectured and published widely and is the author of the textbook Introducing Interpreting Studies (2004/2016), editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies (2015), and co-editor of the journal Interpreting.
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