Martín de León, Celia and González-Ruiz, Víctor (2016): From the Lab to the Classroom and Back Again: Perspectives on Translation and Interpreting Training. Bern: Peter Lang, 369 p.

The current volume, edited by Celia Martín de León and Víctor González-Ruiz, foregrounds the topic of translator and interpreter training by entertaining the interrelation between translation and interpreting (T&I) didactics and research as well as by channelling insights from recent T&I studies to pedagogical practices. The edited book consists of 11 chapters, connected by four thematic threads: 1) didactics and research, 2) cognitive and psychological perspectives, 3) quality assessment, and 4) training for professional practice. Each of the themes addresses translator and interpreter training by exploring the interface between training and research. As such, the volume could be regarded as an attempt to advocate a research-based, evidence-driven approach to translator and interpreter training. The editors open the volume with a very useful, informative and reader-friendly introduction. Before describing each chapter, the editors take care to contextualize each of the aforementioned four themes, providing cogent rationales, cementing conceptual and theoretical backgrounds, and taking stock of the historical development of relevant research. As a reviewer, I am hooked and intrigued by the well-crafted introductory content and, as a result, cannot wait to find out what the volume has to offer. The first theme, reflected in the first two chapters, concerns the overall relationship between didactics and research. In chapter 1, Franz Pöchhacker reflects on such a relationship in interpreter education, drawing inspiration from Jesús Sanz, one of the forerunners in interpreting studies. More specifically, Pöchhacker focuses on structural (the institutional status of interpreter education), epistemological (a teacher’s acquisition of relevant knowledge and know-how), methodological (research methods), pedagogical (moving from a teacher-dominated to student-centered approach to teaching), and personal (personal desire for knowledge) dimensions of the relationship. This chapter could be regarded as a follow-up to Pöchhacker’s (2010) previous account of the role of research in interpreter education. Chapter 2, contributed by Javier Franco Aixelá, provides a bibliometric analysis of T&I didactics, based on the Bibliography of Interpreting and Translation (BITRA). As an open access database, BITRA is impressive regarding the quantity of T&I entries and the time span it covers. One of the insights derived from the analysis is that T&I didactics has developed steadily since the 1950s, with an increasing number of publications recorded in the database. Another useful insight obtained concerns the evolution of translation as a mere language learning exercise in the early years to the current status of T&I studies as an independent academic discipline. Three chapters (3, 4, and 5), subsumed under the second theme, examine T&I from cognitive and psychological perspectives, and relate relevant findings to T&I training. In chapter 3, Alicia Bolaños-Medina argues for translation psychology (TP) as a subdiscipline of Translatology that investigates emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and social factors influencing translators in their process. Bolaños-Medina also ventures to map out a tentative research agenda for TP, and discusses the possible implications of TP for translation teaching. Specifically, Bolaños-Medina proposes three major branches/foci of TP, with each having different research areas: 1) the instrumental focus (concerned with cultural and cross-cultural psychology, psychological testing and assessment, research design and methods), 2) the individual functioning focus (looking at differential and personality psychology, psychology of motivation and emotion, psycholinguistic and cognitive processes), and 3) the applied focus (focussing on organizational psychology, educational psychology, and social psychology). In my view, Bolaños-Medina’s contribution is systematic and thought-provoking, pointing out a very promising line of substantive inquiries and serving to expand the terrain of Translation Studies in a fruitful manner. Nonetheless, I also believe that TP poses methodological and analytical challenges to translation researchers, as investigation into the potential research areas/foci outlined above entails psychometrically sound measurement instruments and sophisticated analytics …