The Map

A Beginner's Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies

Jenny Williams, Andrew Chesterman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317642398
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Map is a practical guidebook introducing the basics of research in translation studies for students doing their first major research project in the field. Depending on where they are studying, this may be at advanced undergraduate (BA) or at postgraduate (MA/PHD) level.

The book consists of ten chapters. Chapter 1 offers an overview of 12 research areas in translation studies in order to help students identify a topic and establish some of the current research questions relating to it. Chapter 2 is designed to assist students in planning their research project and covers topics such as refining the initial idea, determining the scope of the project, checking out resources, reading critically, keeping complete bibliographic records, and working with a supervisor. Chapters 3 to 7 provide some of the conceptual and methodological tools needed in this area of research, with detailed discussion of such topics as theoretical models of translation, types of research, asking questions, making claims, formulating hypotheses, establishing relations between variables, and selecting and analyzing data. Chapters 8 and 9 are about presenting one's research, in writing as well as orally. Finally, chapter 10 deals with some of the criteria commonly used in research assessment, especially in the assessment of theses. The authors provide detailed guidance on further reading throughout.

This is an essential reference work for research students and lecturers involved in supervising research projects and degrees.

1.
Areas in Translation Research

This chapter gives an overview of 12 research areas in Translation Studies. The list itself is by no means exhaustive nor is the coverage of each topic comprehensive. It is merely intended to provide a point of orientation – a Map – for researchers setting out to explore Translation Studies.

1.1 Text Analysis and Translation

Source Text Analysis

Source text analysis focuses on the analysis of the source text itself, examining the various aspects of it that might give rise to translation problems. This has an obvious relevance in translator training. A good primary background reference is Nord (1991). The point of such an analysis is to prepare for a translation: after a careful analysis of the syntactic, semantic and stylistic features of the source text, it will presumably be easier to come up with adequate translation solutions. This kind of focus is usually linked to an analysis of the communicative situation of the translation itself: who it will be for, what its function is intended to be, and so on.

Comparison of Translations and their Source Texts

The analysis of translated texts involves the textual comparison of a translation with its original. A translation comparison deals with several translations, into the same language or into different languages, of the same original. Such topics cannot deal with every possible aspect of the texts, of course, so you have to choose the aspect(s) you want to focus on. You might take a particular aspect of the source text, such as a particular stylistic or syntactic feature, and examine the corresponding sections in the translations. Or you could start with a kind of translation problem (the translation of passive sentences, or dialect, or allusions, for instance), and see how your translator(s) have solved the problem, what translation strategies they have used. Or you could start with a kind of translation strategy, some kind of change or shift between source and target texts (e.g. the strategy of explicitation), and examine its conditions of use. (For references to research on explicitation, see e.g. the entry for it in Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997.) In all these cases, your aim would be to discover patterns of correspondence between the texts. In other words, you would be interested in possible regularities of the translator’s behaviour, and maybe also in the general principles that seem to determine how certain things get translated under certain conditions. (See Leuven-Zwart 1989 and 1990 for a methodology for translation analysis.)

Comparison of Translations and Non-translated Texts

This kind of analysis compares translations into a given language with similar texts originally written in that language. Traditionally in Translation Studies scholars have referred to these as parallel texts; with the advent of corpus-based Translation Studies these original-language texts are now sometimes called comparable texts. The idea here is to examine the way in which translations tend to differ from other texts in the target language, the way they often turn out to be not quite natural. (This might, or might not, be a good thing – depending on the aim and type of the translation in question.) This kind of research is quantitative, and usually deals with relative differences of distribution of particular textual features. For some examples, see several of the papers in Olohan (2000) and the special issue of Meta 43(4) (1998).

All the above research areas involve forms of contrastive text analysis and contrastive stylistics. They thus depend implicitly on some kind of contrastive theory. (See Chesterman 1998 for the relation between the theories and methodologies of contrastive analysis and Translation Studies.)

Translation with Commentary

A translation with commentary (or annotated translation) is a form of introspective and retrospective research where you yourself translate a text and, at the same time, write a commentary on your own translation process. This commentary will include some discussion of the translation assignment, an analysis of aspects of the source text, and a reasoned justification of the kinds of solutions you arrived at for particular kinds of translation problems. One value of such research lies in the contribution that increased self-awareness can make to translation quality. You might also want to show whether you have found any helpful guidelines for your translation decisions in what you have read in Translation Studies. A classical example of such a commentary is Bly (1984), where the translator describes in detail the various stages he went through during the translation of a poem.

1.2 Translation Quality Assessment

Translation quality assessment, unlike most of the areas mentioned here, is overtly evaluative. Translations are assessed in real life in several circumstances: during training, in examinations for official certification, by critics and reviewers, and ultimately of course by the ordinary reader. Some assessment methods have been developed by scholars, others by teachers, and still others by the translation industry. Some international standards have been set up in order to control or assure quality (ISO 9002, DIN 2345).

We can distinguish three general approaches to quality assessment. One is source-oriented, based on the relation between the translation and its source text. Assessment methods of this kind set up definitions of required equivalence and then classify various kinds of deviance from this equivalence. (See e.g. House 1997 and Schäffner 1998; the special issues of TTR 2(2) 1989, The Translator 6(2) 2000 and Meta 46(2) 2001.)

The second approach is target-language oriented. Here, the relation at stake is not with the source text but with the target language. Equivalence is not a central concept here. This approach uses text analysis (see above) in order to assess the differences between the translation in question and other comparable texts in the target language. The idea is to measure the translation’s degree of naturalness – on the assumption that this is often a feature to be desired. (See Toury 1995 and Leuven-Zwart 1989 and 1990.)

The third approach has to do with the assessment of translation effects – on clients, teachers, critics and readers. In the case of a literary translation, you might examine published reviews in the press. (See e.g. Maier 1998 and Fawcett 2000.) Or you might interview publishers or readers about their expectations concerning translation quality. Or you might carry out comprehension tests on the translation, to see how well people understood it. Or you might send out a questionnaire to translation teachers, to see what kinds of marking methods and criteria they used. This approach finds functional and/or communicative theories of translation useful, such as skopos theory, since the skopos is the ‘purpose for which a translator designs a translation (“translatum”) in agreement with his commissioner’ (Vermeer 1996: 7).

All three general approaches are illustrated in chapter 5 of Chesterman (1997).

1.3 Genre Translation

By ‘genre’ we mean both traditional literary genres such as drama, poetry and prose fiction as well as other well established and clearly defined types of text for translation such as multimedia texts, religious texts, children’s literature, tourism texts, technical texts and legal documents. See Swales (1991) and Trosborg (1997) for an overview of definitions and methodological concepts.

For a good introduction to the major issues in literary translation, see Bassnett (1991), Gaddis Rose (1997), Bassnett and Lefevere (1998) and Boase-Beier and Holman (1999).

Drama

The status of drama texts is a major issue here, and among the first questions to be addressed are: is this play being translated to be performed or to be read? If it is to be performed, what sort of translation is required – a rough one which will be a starting point for the production or a fully performable one or something in between? The process of translation ‘from page to stage’ throws up many research questions – for example, the role(s) of the various participants: translator, director, actors. There is plenty of scope for undertaking a case study of an individual production, researching the biography of an established drama translator, comparing different translations of the same play.

Other topics which suggest themselves include the question of (trans)location: (where) is the foreign play located in the target culture? Brecht has been located in the north-east of England and Chekov in the west of Ireland: what are the reasons for / implications of such (trans)locations? See Upton (2000) for a discussion of cultural relocation. Performability – which ranges from body language to choice of props – is another worthwhile topic.

See Johnston (1996) for a range of views from translators for the stage, Aaltonen (1996), Anderman (1998) and Bassnett (2000) for further reading.

Poetry

Poetic texts can provide interesting material for translation research, especially if time is limited, since the texts concerned can be quite short. Here the major topics include

• The aim of the translation – a prose version or a poem?
• The translation of metre, cadence, rhythm, rhyme
• The profile of the translator – can only poets translate poetry?
• How do translators translate poetry?

See Holmes (1994) for an overview of the issues in poetry translation and both De Beaugrande (1978) and Bly (1984) for a ‘step by step’ guide to translating a poem.

Prose Fiction

This is the field where most full-time literary translators earn their living. As it is impossible to research the totality of a novel, or even a short story, it is important to select one aspect. This could be the narrative perspective of the author/translator, the translation of dialogue, the handling of culture-specific items or the translation of humour. Sometimes it can make sense to concentrate on the first chapter or opening scene, since this often sets the tone for the remainder of the work.

One under-researched area here is contemporary translators themselves: their biographies, how they obtain translation contracts, their relations with editors and publishers. It could be interesting to interview a translator and discover how they go about their work, whether they write prefaces / afterwords, whether they use footnotes or provide glossaries (see Pelegrin 1987).

A further area worth investigating is the reception of translated works: how do critics review translated works? What do they have to say about translation (if anything)? See Fawcett (2000) for a study of the reception of translation in the quality press.

Bassnett (1998) provides a useful categorization of the types of research which can be undertaken at doctoral level in literary translation.

Religious Texts

In order to engage in translation criticism, you will need in-depth knowledge of one (or more) of the source languages. Major research questions concerning religious texts have to do with

• The enormous temporal and cultural gap between the societies for which these texts were written and the societies for which they have been translated
• The tension between treating religious texts such as the Bible as a sacred text in which every word is holy (which requires a word-for-word translation) and using it as a missionizing text (which requires a target-culture-centred approach). See Nida (1964) and Nida and Taber (1969).

Gaddis Rose (2000) and Jasper (1993) provide useful starti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Areas in Translation Research
• 2. From the Initial Idea to the Plan
• 3. Theoretical Models of Translation
• 4. Kinds of Research
• 5. Questions, Claims, Hypotheses
• 6. Relations between Variables
• 7. Selecting and Analyzing Data
• 8. Writing Your Research Report
• 9. Presenting Your Research Orally
• 10. Assessing Your Research
• References
• Index