Why methods matter: Approaching multimodality in translation research.

Abstract

The cognitive turn in TS postulates that access to knowledge is basically multimodal, dependent on the senses that process external inputs, so that both communication and translation are (multi)modal. The semiotics of the senses has provided us with theories on modes and their languages (visual, acoustic) and from the first decade onwards, methodologies have been explored. The year 2018 is the one of publications on research methods in TeI. In this article we take a look at the characteristics of multimodal communication, highlighting its semiotic characteristics and the challenges they pose from a theoretical, but above all methodological, point of view. The possibilities of innovating on the more traditional methods (corpus linguistics, descriptive and comparative analysis) and how to reuse them for the phenomenon of multimodality are highlighted. A historical review and justification of the imperative need to rethink methodologies and to approach the most innovative ones, among which systemic and functional semiotic analyses are described. It describes a concept of multimodality based on the most current semiotics that understands communication from the perspective of the interaction of semiotic modes and their grammars.