Emeritus Professor Jeremy Munday

Profile

I took early retirement in 2022 and now have an Emeritus position at Leeds. My specialisms are: linguistic translation theories, discourse analysis (including systemic functional linguistics), ideology and translation, translator manuscripts and Latin American literature in translation. I am author of Introducing Translation Studies (Routledge).

I am a member of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (SPLAS) and of the Centre for Translation Studies (CTS).

Executive, advisory and editoral roles

I have had executive, advisory or editorial roles for the Chartered Institute of Linguists, the European Society for Translation Studies and the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies, as well as for translation studies journals worldwide. I am also General Editor for the Bloomsbury Advances in Translation series.

I have given guest lectures and workshops and have been external assessor in over 40 countries.

I have acted as an expert linguistic witness in various trademark cases and interpreted for business clients, and my translations have appeared, amongst others, in the Royal Academy, London, the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, and in Unesco’s collection of representative works of world literature.

Research interests

My research centres on the application of linguistic theories to the analysis of translation. How does a text ‘mean’ what it does, and what happens to it in translation? I seek to identify how a translator or interpreter ‘intervenes’ in a text. For me, translation and interpreting are not transparent conduits of information but may develop into sites of power struggles between languages, participants and institutions. The results of such research are often directly applicable to translator and interpreter training. My research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy and the Friends of Princeton Library.

Current or forthcoming Research Projects

My work on translation and ideology, especially the identification of the linguistic ‘intervention’ of the translator/interpreter, has been used by others in the field to study critical points of translator decision-making. This has been funded by an AHRC Research Fellowship. Together with researchers in Australia, China, Korea and Spain, I continue to work on models of discourse analysis for the study of all types of translation and interpreting. I am also working on the use of translator archives and papers for the analysis of literary translation. 

Student education

I no longer have a regular timetable but I do give the occasional lecture or workshop for the Centre for Translation Studies at Leeds, and assist with PhD supervision. From time to time I give guest lectures in other institutions.

To date, 32 of my PhD students, from 17 different countries, have successfully completed and defended their theses. I have also externally examined some 15 PhD theses in the UK, Australia, Ireland, China, Malaysia, Norway and Spain.

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies
• Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies
• Translation
• Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American
• Literary studies