Links
Areas of expertise
translation universals
Biography
Léa Huotari (PhD) is a university teacher in French Studies at the University of Turku. Before working in academia, she worked as a professional translator and interpreter for 15 years. She also worked as a journalist for the French weekly Courrier International for 10 years.
She completed her PhD degree at the University of Helsinki in 2021. During her doctoral studies, she spent 2 years as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley where she studied cognitive linguistics. Her doctoral thesis “Prototype effect on subject change in translation – A study in a French⇄Finnish bidirectional literary corpus” combined research on translation universal within the field of Translation studies with cognitive linguistics.
She is currently on research leave to work on her post doc project “Translation as a journalistic tool” at the University of California, Berkeley (Funding from the Fulbright Finland foundation, co-shared with the University of Turku) and the University of Tartu (funding from The Finnish Cultural Foundation) during the academic year 2023-2024.
Research
“Translation as a journalistic tool” post doc project investigates the role of translation in media within the field of translation studies and more specifically journalistic translation. The study focuses on the use of foreign language sources used in the media coverage of two non-English speaking, historically related foreign countries: France and Mali by the two largest Finnish media outlets. This research aims to shed light on the use of source texts, their status and their impact on news process. More broadly, the project aims to explore whether the possible reliance on secondary source material in English can compromise the diversity of voices and perspectives in Finnish media.