Dina Zander-Tabbert

Dina Zander-Tabbert is a sign language interpreter and lecturer in sign language interpreting. She has worked as a freelance interpreter since 1992 and as a conference interpreter since 2013. She has particular experience in political and academic contexts. She holds a state exam in Deaf education and German studies (1999), as well as an MA EUMASLI European Master's in Sign Language Interpreting (2023). She is a state-certified and sworn interpreter, and has taught on interpreting training programmes at several universities, including Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research focuses on educational interpreting and the sociolinguistic dimensions of interpreted interaction. Since May 2024, she has been a PhD student at Humboldt University of Berlin, researching the topic of 'Managing the Translated Deaf Self' and is also enrolled on the accompanying PhD programme, 'Qualitative Research in Education and Social Sciences', at Otto-von-Guericke-University/ Magdeburg.

This seminar presents my research process within Interpreting Studies, focusing on how qualitative research is practically conducted in interpreter-mediated, multilingual, and multimodal contexts. Drawing on the Grounded Theory Method (GTM) (Glaser & Strauss 1967; Kathy Charmaz 2014, 2025), I demonstrate how theory emerges from empirical engagement with interpreting as a social practice.

Building on my PhD project, “Managing the Translated Deaf Self,” I examine how Deaf professionals shape and negotiate their interpreted presence in interactions between German Sign Language (DGS) and spoken German. The study follows a constructivist GTM approach, conceptualizing data and analysis as co-constructed through the interaction of researcher, participants, and interpreter-mediated contexts.

The seminar foregrounds the research process itself: from ethnographic participant observation to theoretically guided sampling across different professional settings, and the development of categories through iterative coding, constant comparison, and memo writing. An abductive logic of inquiry (Tavory, Iddo & Timmermans, Stefan 2014) uses moments of tension and uncertainty as starting points for conceptual development.

Situated within current debates in Interpreting Studies, the seminar demonstrates how GTM can be applied to interpreting research and invites participants to reflect on their own research practices. It positions methodology as an iterative, reflexive, and practice-based process.

Questions of who signs, who is seen, and who decides what counts as knowledge are central to social science research. Processes of representation are tied to epistemic orders that determine which forms of expression become visible and scientifically legitimate (Spivak 1988; Foucault 1972). At the same time, criteria of qualitative research quality—validity, reliability, and objectivity, or transferability (Denzin 1989)—frame the expectation that research should be transparent and independent of individual researchers.

These assumptions are challenged when research engages with visual, situated, and multimodal data, as in sign languages (Temple & Young 2004). Since most academic knowledge is produced in written form—often in English—sign language data must be transformed through transcription and translation. These are not neutral processes, but shape what becomes visible, noticeable, and recognized as knowledge (Crossman & Noma 2019; Stone & West 2012).

Within this context, the Grounded Theory Method (Glaser & Strauss 1967; Charmaz 2006) gains particular relevance in multilingual and multimodal research settings. Translation here is not merely technical but epistemically productive: it functions as a heuristic process that reshapes coding, supports conceptual development, and enables the integration of cultural nuance. Especially during coding, translating and rearticulating data across languages deepens interpretation and opens pathways for abstraction and theory-building.

This seminar situates these questions within my PhD research on “Managing the Translated Deaf Self.” Drawing on ethnographic video data, interviews, and focus groups with Deaf professionals, I examine how participant observation, annotation, and translation structure processes of representation. Rather than resolving these tensions, the seminar proposes to understand them as an integral and productive part of the research process, and illustrates this through practical examples from the data and analysis.