by María Aguilar Lara
Hi! My name is María and I’m excited to introduce myself as SubComm’s new research assistant. This is my first blog post on SubComm’s website, but you will be hearing more from me if you follow SubComm’s Instagram https://www.instagram.com/projectsubcomm :).
I did my undergrad in English Literature and Linguistics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) and went to the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC) for my Erasmus+. I worked as an English teacher for most of my degree. I considered getting a Master’s in Education to become a High School teacher, but ended up deciding against it. I explored different options and ended up studying a Master’s in Translation Studies at University College Cork (UCC), where I work with English and Spanish. I specifically chose UCC because of their module on Audiovisual Translation, which Hannah teaches. I knew I had made the right choice in choosing UCC when, on our first day of class, Tiina came to talk about her research on User-Centered Subtitling. Listening to her talk made me want to get more involved in the subtitling industry, so when Hannah and Tiina mentioned SubComm and how they might hire a Research Assistant, I immediately knew I had to try. Now, a few months later, I can’t believe I actually got the job! I am so thankful to Hannah and Tiina for giving me this wonderful opportunity to learn more about AVT from the inside and how scholars and practitioners can come together to build a community and improve their work.
As for my current research interests, I would say it’s just food! Food as language, food as culture, food as identity, food as belonging… I love food and all the cultural meaning that is embedded into it, but I specifically love all the challenges that come with translating food. When you are translating food, you are also translating a culture, and one false move could lead to erasure or misunderstandings. In the future, I would like to research how media can support the translation of food terms, since seeing an image or a video might mean the food term (for instance, bulgogi) might be able to remain the same and not have to be “translated” (thinly sliced, marinated Korean beef).
