Research Methodologies in Translation Studies

Saldanha, Gabriela; O’Brien, Sharon

doi:10.4324/9781315760100

Cited by 249 publications

(156 citation statements)

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“…This means that the initial template will often need revision, for example, through the insertion, deletion or merging of codes and the data will typically be reread several times and the template adjusted accordingly. This process will go on until the researcher reaches a point of analytical saturation where all sections of text relevant to the research question have been assigned codes, the analysis stops producing new codes and the template represents the themes in the data (King 1998, 2004, 2012, O'Brien/Saldanha 2013). This final template is then used as the point of departure for producing an account of the data, providing illustrative examples.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translator Attitudes towards Translator-Computer Interaction - Findings from a Workplace Study

Bundgaard

2017

HJLCB

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Today technology is part and parcel of professional translation, and translation has therefore been characterised as Translator-Computer Interaction (TCI) (O'Brien 2012). Translation is increasingly carried out using Translation Memory (TM) systems which incorporate machine translation (MT), referred to as MT-assisted TM translation, and in this type of tool, translators switch between editing TM matches and post-editing MT matches. It is generally assumed that translators' attitudes towards technology impact on this interaction with the technology. Drawing on Eagly/ Chaiken's (1995) definition of attitudes as evaluations of entities with favour or disfavour and on qualitative data from a workplace study of TCI, conducted as part of a PhD dissertation (Bundgaard 2017) and partly reported on in Bundgaard et al. (2016), this paper explores translator attitudes towards TCI in the form of MT-assisted TM translation. In doing so, the paper has a particular focus on the disfavour towards TCI expressed by translators. Moreover, inspired by Olohan (2011), who applies Pickering's "mangle of practice" theory and analyses resistance and accommodation in TCI, the paper focuses on how translators accommodate resistances offered by the tool. The study shows that the translators express disfavour towards MT in many respects, but also acknowledge positive aspects of the technology and expect MT to play a significant role in their future working lives. The translators do not make many positive or negative comments about TM which might indicate that TM is a completely integrated part of their processes. The translators seem to have a flexible and pragmatic attitude towards TCI, adapting to the tool's imperfections and accommodating its resistances.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translator Attitudes towards Translator-Computer Interaction - Findings from a Workplace Study

Bundgaard

2017

HJLCB

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“…Previous research (Anari & Ghaffarof, 2013;Angelelli, 2009;Bowker, 2000;Brione, 2007;Butler & McMunn, 2014;Doyle, 2003;Drugan, 2013;Honig, 1997;Hatim & Mason;Prior et al, 2011; indicated that the application of assessment research-based criteria resulted in improving the quality of translation. Furthermore, research on the relationship between linguistics and the evaluation of translation (Colina, 2003;Drugan, 2013;Gambier & Doorslaer, 2011;Gouadec, 2010;Kim, 2006;Lauscher, 2000;Martinez-Melis & Hurtado, 2001;Mossop, 2007;Neubert, 2000;Pym, 2003;Reiss, 2000;Saldanha & O'Brien, 2014;Schaffner, 1998) concluded that providing an objective assessment tool prior to the process of translation enabled in understanding the concept of quality in relation to valid criteria. Therefore, the corpus data of the current research was collected from the original works of the functional linguistic approaches that are employed in translation quality assessment.…”

Section: Purpose Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Application of Functional Linguistic Models for Assessing Quality of Translation: A Descriptive Analytical Study

Madkour

2016

IJEL

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This descriptive analytical study aimed at examining the application of linguistic-based functional approaches in assessing the quality of translation. A number of translation quality assessment models were analyzed to investigate the potential of integrating linguistic theories into translation theories. The problem that the present study tackled was that institutions of translation at higher education, translation organizations, and agencies of translation worldwide face difficulties in evaluating the quality of translation. Using objective criteria, which are based on the variables of quality, is still debated among these shareholders. The rationale of the present study is that adopting functional linguistic approaches can help in understanding the components of the quality of translation in terms of the relationship between translation purposes and functional adequacy. Linguistic functional approaches can determine the relationship between textual adequacy, and translation quality of content. Therefore, the current study followed a nonlinear design, which allowed an intensive description and analysis of three functional models applied in Translation Quality Assessment (TQA), and their effectiveness in assessing the quality of translation. Corpus data was collected from the theories and original works of House, Nord, and Colina, on translation quality assessment. Problems related to discourse analysis, function of the language, text typology, and theories of equivalence were examined. Translation criticism and evaluation including the classification of the functional hierarchy of translation, standards and benchmarks, empirical evidence for the success and limitations of the linguistic functionalist approaches in translation assessment, and competences and performances in translation, were thoroughly investigated. The research recommendations of the current study emphasize a number of issues relevant to translation evaluation. These issues are: (a) the significance of integrating the linguistic functional approaches into the curriculum of translation; (b) the importance of defining the components of solid criteria that can be employed for evaluating the quality of translations; and (c) the necessity of providing an empirical tool that can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of translated works. As such, this research study is a contribution in the field of translation evaluation and criticism as it provides a number of models that can be implemented in translation classrooms or in translation organizations. This study also provides an evaluation matrix, based on the models of TQA that can help translators understand the requirements of translation quality prior to the translation process itself. This research is also among the first studies to illustrate how to implement linguistic functional approaches that can be adopted by translation organizations, academic institutions, and publishing houses, to evaluate professional translations and this will inevitably lead to raising the standards of translati...

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“…the analysis of translation products produced by participants in a particular process-oriented study of translation expertise), and larger-scale, quantitative product-based methodologies, specifically corpus approaches, are an underrepresented area of enquiry, regardless of the calls of translation researchers such as Alves, Pagano, Neumann, Steiner and Hansen-Schirra (2010) and Alves and Vale (2011) for the incorporation of corpora in process-oriented translation studies. Therefore, currently the overlap is limited between translation expertise research and yet another flourishing area in translation studies, namely corpus-based translation studies -a product-based methodology used to study a number of aspects that are related to translated language (Saldanha and O'Brien 2013). The investigation on which this article reports is based on the assumption that a better understanding of and new insights into translation expertise can be gained by using the corpusbased approach to test, complement and extend the results from process-oriented studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Levelling-out and register variation in the translations of experienced and inexperienced translators: a corpus-based study

Redelinghuys¹

2016

SPIL

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Explicitation, simplification, normalisation and levelling-out, the four features of translation proposed by Baker (1996), have attracted considerable attention in translation studies. Although the first three have been studied extensively, levelling-out has been the subject of less empirical investigation. Furthermore, there are no studies to date that have investigated the extent to which levelling-out occurs in translations by experienced translators and inexperienced translators. In this study, levelling-out is operationalised in terms of register. It is hypothesised that less register variation will be apparent in translations by inexperienced translators and, in keeping with the features of translation hypothesis, it is predicted that select linguistic features will demonstrate less register variation in translations than in non-translations. A custom-built corpus was compiled to test these hypotheses. While some light is shed on how translation expertise contributes to register sensitivity and the distribution of certain features across different registers, little evidence could be found for levelling-out as register variation is evident in the translation corpora.

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Research Methodologies in Translation Studies

Cited by 249 publications

References 0 publications

Translator Attitudes towards Translator-Computer Interaction - Findings from a Workplace Study

Translator Attitudes towards Translator-Computer Interaction - Findings from a Workplace Study

The Application of Functional Linguistic Models for Assessing Quality of Translation: A Descriptive Analytical Study

Levelling-out and register variation in the translations of experienced and inexperienced translators: a corpus-based study

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