Who are you?
I am Simo Määttä, Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki. I am Head of the and hold a title of docent in French Studies. I teach in the at the University of Helsinki. I am Chair of the Board of the .
I received my PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and have since worked at several universities in Finland, and since 2014 at the University of Helsinki.
What is your research topic?
My research is based on sociological translation studies, critical sociolinguistics and critical discourse studies. I am interested in how language use and other interactions are represented and what meanings are given to linguistic interactions – especially multilingual communication and linguistic variation.
One of my main research interests is public service (or community) and legal interpreting. In this field, I examine language ideologies, accuracy of interpreting, multimodality, the agency of participants in the interpreter-mediated encounter, the expression of empathy and the realisation of linguistic rights. In particular, I have studied lingua franca interpreting, where both the interpreter and the client speaking a foreign language communicate in a language that is not their first language. This is common, for example, when an asylum seeker, migrant or foreign national suspected of or victim of a crime communicates with an interpreter in French or English.
I lead the project (2022-2025) funded by the Kone Foundation, where our research team analyses translation policies and practices in multilingual communication targeted to migrant populations. The research focuses on organisations (e.g. municipalities, organisations, companies, universities, media) operating in the Helsinki metropolitan area (Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa) and in Tallinn. The project combines theories and methods of functionalist and sociological translation studies and critical linguistics.
The project is founded on the idea that multilingualism constitutes not only an opportunity for democracy, but also a challenge: the language barrier prevents migrants from participating in social, cultural and political life and from becoming full members of their local community and society. Translation aims to promote migrants’ access to information and participation, but it does not reach all migrants. The project approaches translation as a practice of governmentality, through which power is exercised and produced. One of the objectives is to propose new solutions, together with different actors, to improve the quality of translation policies and practices.
I am also involved in the EU Horizon-funded project , coordinated by Professor (Cergy Paris Université), in which our international, multidisciplinary consortium analyses the extremist narratives affecting and threatening European political and social life. We explore the nature of extremist narratives and seek to understand them, in particular those concerning science, gender and the Nation. By understanding how these narratives work, we aim to find ways to counter extremist narratives and thus contribute to the harmonious development of Europe.
Within the ARENAS project, I am involved in a work package related to the circulation of extremist narratives, coordinated by historian from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The ARENAS team in Helsinki is led by Dr. , Jean Monet Professor and Associate Professor of Political History. I am responsible for a task of qualitative research on how extremist narratives circulate between political discourse, traditional media and new media. The qualitative data for the study is selected on the basis of the quantitative data produced and analysed in the other tasks of the work package.
I also analyse the theory of discourse, ideology (especially language ideology), performativity, and hate speech. My previous research has focused on the translation of sociolinguistic variation in literature and language policies related to regional and minority languages.
How is your research related to Kielipankki – the Language Bank of Finland?
In the part of the ARENAS project that I am responsible for, we use the corpora available in the Language Bank on , especially in plenary sessions. These data have allowed us to see exactly how the topics discussed in traditional and new media correspond to the political debate in Parliament. In addition, our research has made use of the ParlaMint corpus and a corpus compiled for the ARENAS project, which consists of social media posts by politicians in different countries.
I also used the from the Language Bank in a co-authored with to examine how online discussants express dissenting and sympathetic opinions about gender and sexual minorities. We also used Suomi24 data in articles written with and in and , analysing discussions on immigration.
Selected publications
Määttä, S. & Kinnunen, T. 2024. . Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 43(3), 299–330.
Määttä, S., Kinnunen, T., Kuusi, P. & Probirskaja, S. 2024. . Työelämän tutkimus 22(4), 555–587.
Määttä, S. 2023. . Internet Pragmatics 6(2), 156–172.
Määttä, S. & Wiklund, M. 2023. . Teoksessa: E. de Boe, J. Vranjes & H. Salaets (toim.) Interactional Dynamics in Remote Interpreting: Micro-analytical Approaches. New York: Routledge, 42–65.
Määttä, S. & Hall, M. 2022. . Teoksessa: S. Määttä & M. Hall (toim.) Mapping Ideology in Discourse Studies. Boston & Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 1–20.
Määttä, S. & Lauranto, Y. 2022. . Virittäjä 126(2), 205–230.
Määttä, S., Puumala, E. & Ylikomi, R. 2021. . Discourse Studies 23(1), 46–66.
Määttä, S., Suomalainen, K. & Tuomarla, U. 2021. . Citizenship Studies 25(6), 773–790.
Vernet, S. & Määttä, S. 2021. . Mots – Les langages du politique 125, 35–51.
Määttä, S., Suomalainen, K. & Tuomarla, U. 2020. . Virittäjä 124(2), 190–216.
Corpora
More information
The consortium consists of a group of Finnish universities along with CSC – IT Center for Science and the Institute for the Languages of Finland (Kotus). FIN-CLARIN helps the researchers of Social Sciences and Humanities to use, refine, preserve and share their language resources. is the collection of services that provides the language materials and tools for the research community.