Research Methodologies in Translation Studies

Gabriela Saldanha, Sharon O'Brien

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317641162
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachwissenschaft

As an interdisciplinary area of research, translation studies attracts students and scholars with a wide range of backgrounds, who then need to face the challenge of accounting for a complex object of enquiry that does not adapt itself well to traditional methods in other fields of investigation. This book addresses the needs of such scholars – whether they are students doing research at postgraduate level or more experienced researchers who want to familiarize themselves with methods outside their current field of expertise. The book promotes a discerning and critical approach to scholarly investigation by providing the reader not only with the know-how but also with insights into how new questions can be fruitfully explored through the coherent integration of different methods of research. Understanding core principles of reliability, validity and ethics is essential for any researcher no matter what methodology they adopt, and a whole chapter is therefore devoted to these issues.

Research Methodologies in Translation Studies is divided into four different chapters, according to whether the research focuses on the translation product, the process of translation, the participants involved or the context in which translation takes place. An introductory chapter discusses issues of reliability, credibility, validity and ethics. The impact of our research depends not only on its quality but also on successful dissemination, and the final chapter therefore deals with what is also generally the final stage of the research process: producing a research report.

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 Motivation and Intended audience

Recent years have witnessed an increase in the number of translation training programmes across the world, with a resulting explosion in the number of masters and doctoral students and, as reported in Mason (2009a), a concomitant move towards explicit forms of research training in translation studies. The book entitled The Map: A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies, co-authored by Jenny Williams and Andrew Chesterman and published in 2002, was given a very warm welcome by the translation studies community and is still highly regarded by established and novice researchers alike. Clearly there was, and still is, a thirst for a book that was specifically focused on research within the domain of translation studies. Since the publication of The Map, there have been some methodological developments in the field with, for example, the application of methods such as keystroke logging, eye tracking, Internet-mediated research, as well as an increased focus on sociological and ethnographic approaches to research and on research ethics. We feel it is now time to build on the excellent foundation set by Williams and Chesterman. The Map establishes the foundations of translation studies research and is particularly useful for those who are starting to think about doing research in this area, and who need to decide between different areas of research, theoretical models, types of research, and so on. The focus of this book is on specific methodologies. We describe in detail when and how to apply different methodologies and we provide examples from translation studies research. There are, already, many excellent publications that describe how these methodogies are applied in related domains such as applied linguistics, social science, psychology and cultural studies. These books are, of course, valuable to the translation researcher. However, it is our experience that even in related disciplines the books fail to answer all our questions about doing research in translation. Often the examples feel distant or even irrelevant, thus failing to inspire translation studies researchers. We are convinced that discussing methodologies within the translation studies context and offering examples of current best practice has a value above and beyond standard, generic textbooks.

The Map is a beginner’s guide, as stated in the title, and is mostly directed at PhD students. This book will also hopefully be useful to PhD, Masters and Undergraduate students. Research students are expected to develop core research skills, such as understanding what counts as creativity, originality, and the exercise of academic judgement. We have kept these needs in mind during the writing process. However, we feel that a need exists beyond this readership too. As discussed below, translation studies is interdisciplinary by nature. While the professionalization of translation and the recognition of translation as an academic discipline have resulted in translation-specific educational pathways all the way from the undergraduate to the doctoral level, the field of translation studies continues to attract researchers from many different backgrounds who may not be familiar with the wide range of methodological practices in the field. By bringing together in one publication methodologies originating in different disciplines and discussing how they can be fruitfully combined for the study of translation we aim to contribute to the cross-fertilization of the different research practices that inform translation studies.

1.2 Scope and limitations

Guba and Lincoln (2005:191) argue that “[m]ethodology is inevitably interwoven with and emerges from the nature of particular disciplines”. Linguistics and literary criticism were for a long time the main source of theories and methods in translation research, which was based on comparative text analysis carried out with varying levels of linguistic or literary insight. Much of the research on literary translation is still embedded within a comparative literature framework and linguistic approaches are still widely used, although rarely with the same narrow focus they initially adopted. During the 1980s, translation scholars began to draw more heavily on methodologies borrowed from other disciplines, including psychology, communication theory, anthropology, philosophy and cultural studies (Baker 1998:278). More recently, the importation of theories and models from social theory has again widened the range of methodologies applied within translation studies. In 1998, Baker suggested that:

Although some scholars see translation studies as interdisciplinary by nature (Snell-Hornby 1988), this does not mean that the discipline is not developing or cannot develop a coherent research methodology of its own. Indeed, the various methodologies and theoretical frameworks borrowed from different disciplines are increasingly being adapted and reassessed to meet the specific needs of translation scholars. (Baker 1998:279)

The picture emerging from the current book is not of a single coherent methodology that could be described as specific to translation studies. However, there is indeed evidence of adaptation and reassessment, which is perhaps most clear in the dynamism with which different theoretical frameworks and methodologies are being combined for the purpose of addressing translation studies’ concerns, since none of the methodological apparatuses of related disciplines can, on their own, fully account for translation phenomena (see, for example, the 2013 special issue of Target on interdisciplinarity in translation process research).

In their overview of the main paradigms in contemporary qualitative research, Guba and Lincoln (2005:191) note that “[i]ndeed, the various paradigms are beginning to ‘interbreed’ such that two theorists previously thought to be in irreconcilable conflict may now appear, under a different theoretical rubric, to be informing one another’s arguments”. We believe that translation studies has now successfully moved beyond the paradigm conflicts of the 1990s (Baker 1998) and has succeeded not only in celebrating and accepting a diversity of approaches but in ‘interbreeding’ for the benefit of a more comprehensive and nuanced account of the object of study.

In terms of this particular book, while we have made an effort to reflect the interdisciplinarity of translation studies and have tried our best to represent the different epistemological and ontological positions within the discipline, our account is necessarily partial, reflecting our own academic backgrounds and experiences. We have aimed to remain aware, insofar as our in-built biases allow us, that our way of seeing and thinking about research methods may not necessarily be in agreement with the way others see or think about them. In what follows we justify our choices and acknowledge their limitations regarding the contents of the book and the views they reflect.

Translation studies is interdisciplinary not only because it borrows from a wide range of disciplines but also because it covers a wide range of practices. While we have made an attempt to reflect this diversity in the examples we have selected for discussion, there are areas of translation research that are not adequately covered by the methodologies described here, such as interpreting and translation history.

In her reflections on the periods of fragmentation experienced by translation studies while fighting to establish itself as an academic discipline in its own right, Baker (1998:279) mentions the fact that theoretical models in translation studies have tended to ignore interpreting and produced research that is of no relevance to those interested in that field. While our impression is that there has been progress in this regard, our experience is mainly within translation studies and we may not be the best people to judge. We see interpreting studies at the forefront of many of the methodological advances in the discipline in recent years, and this view is reflected here in recurrent examples from interpreting studies, particularly in the discussion of critical discourse analysis, interviews and focus groups. However, we also acknowledge that the nature of interpreting as spoken interaction presents certain challenges in terms of research methodology which we are not in a position to discuss in detail.

The same could be said about translation history. The methodology described in Chapter 6, case studies, has often been used in historical translation research and two of the examples used in that chapter deal with historical phenomena. However, the specificities of researching the past are not the focus of the chapter. It is worth noting that translation history is the one area of translation studies research where there is a book-length publication devoted to questions of methodology (Pym 1998).

One topic that has dominated the literature in translation studies in the past few years is the question of centre and periphery, dominant and subservient, Western and non-Western perspectives, and we feel it is important to reflect on these matters in relation to our approach. A question we have often asked ourselves while writing this book is: how ‘universal’ are the research methods described here? Susam-Sarajeva (2002) helpfully rules out the use of the terms ‘Western/non-Western’. She argues that “[b]eing ‘non-Western’ has apparently become the only common denominator behind otherwise vastly different languages and cultures” (ibid.:193). Equally, “the same dichotomy renders ‘the West’ more homogeneous than it actually is” (ibid.). She argues instead for the terms ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ but acknowledges that these are also problematic. Susam-Sarajeva highlights the danger that those operating in ‘the periphery’ will regard their own concepts and ways of thinking as inferior; they will be “‘educated away’ from their own culture and society” (ibid.:199). This, she says, is inevitable, because for research to be considered ‘useful’, ‘publishable’ and ‘quotable’ it must refer to the established (central) frameworks. In order to be rated highly as a researcher, one needs to publish in specific journals, most of which use English as the language of publication and prioritize their own research agendas, with their concomitant limitations in terms of research models and methodologies. One of the authors of this book originates from South America and left behind a country and a language to pursue an academic career. The other originates from and lives in a former colony on the periphery of Europe. Therefore, these issues are close to our hearts as individuals. Nevertheless, there is no denying that our academic perspective is ‘central’ in Susam-Sarajeva’s terms, even if this is by (de)fault rather than choice, since it reflects the environment in which we have been immersed during our academic careers and the one in which we operate more comfortably. We can think of many good reasons for academics to start operating outside their comfort zones, but we take the view that a book on research methodologies is not the best place to do that. However, in the writing of this book we do not intend to present specific frameworks as the only relevant ones and we hope that they are relevant as one way to do things no matter where the research is being conducted or where the researcher or the researched come from.

Our expertise is limited mainly to empirical research, which not only has implications for the scope of the book, focusing on empirical methods and methodologies, but probably also permeates the content in a more pervasive and subtle manner in terms of our assumptions as to what constitutes good academic practice, with its emphasis on evidence, hypotheses and operationalization. Despite acknowledging our limited focus, we have chosen not to call the book ‘empirical research methodologies’ because we do not believe in a clear-cut distinction between conceptual and empirical research. Good empirical research needs to be based on conceptual research and conceptual research, to be useful, needs to be supplemented by evidence. Evidence and theory are crucial to all researchers: “[y]ou need the ‘facts’ – imperfect though they may be; and you need to be able to understand or explain them (theory)” (Gillham 2000:12). Although we generally talk about theories as the basis on which we build our empirical studies, we should not forget that theory is also what researchers create, the way they account for the data, particularly in inductive approaches to research (see Chapter 2). In other words, research can be seen as theory building as well as theory testing; as providing answers (for example, in hypothesis-testing research) as well as framing questions (in hypothesis-generating research).

A further clarification to be made in relation to our understanding of empirical research is that we do not believe that empirical research is necessarily descriptive or incompatible with critical-interpretive approaches. There has been a tendency in translation studies to equate empiricism with descriptivism and the latter with a-historical and uncritical methods that aim to produce generalizations about patterns of translational behaviour with predictive power (Crisafulli 2002). While there is a need for non-prescriptive research that establishes what translators normally do and why, as opposed to telling translators what to do, we also agree with Crisafulli that this does not mean that description must, or can, be non-evaluative: “value judgements influence the selection of data as well as the descriptive categories of analysis and the explanatory theories into which these are organized” (2002:32).

When describing a phenomenon we inevitably foreground certain relationships at the expense of others and thus prioritize certain explanations over others. For example, in a corpus-based study of explicitation, the design of the corpus (whether it is comparable or parallel, whether it includes translations from more than one language or from more than one translator) will necessarily limit the otherwise extremely wide range of factors that could be seen as having an impact on the frequency of instances of explicitation to be found in the corpus. A self-reflective approach to research should acknowledge this inherent bias while at the same time highlighting the benefits of exploring certain variables in depth at the expense of excluding others. It should also look for potentially contradictory evidence as well as seek to back up any results with relevant data from other sources. We consider methodological triangulation to be the backbone of solid, high quality research and so it is implicitly suggested throughout each chapter.

1.3 Research model, structure and content of the book

Empirical research involves gathering observations (in naturalistic or experimental settings) about the world of our experience. Generally, the choice of what aspect to observe will impose certain restrictions in terms of the methods we use. Therefore, we have chosen to divide the chapters of this book according to the focus of our observations: the texts that are the product of translation (Chapter 3), the translation process (Chapter 4), the participants involved in that process (Chapter 5) and the context in which translations are produced and received (Chapter 6). It is important to stress, however, that (1) whether a piece of research is process-, product-, participant- or context-oriented is not determined by the methodology itself or even the source of data but by the ultimate aims of the researcher, and (2) when investigating any of these aspects of translation it is impossible to exclude from view all the others; there is inevitable overlap.

We are aware that, in adopting this division of translation phenomena, we are offering the outline of yet another model of translation studies research, rather than drawing on those already proposed by, for example, Marco (2009) or Chesterman (2000). Our model of translation research is by no means flawless or complete; it reflects the perspectives from which translation has been viewed rather than those from which we could possibly view it. In what follows we explain how this model compares to Chesterman’s and Marco’s.

Chesterman distinguishes three types of models: comparative models, which aim to discover language-pair translation rules, language-system contrasts, or translation product universals (also known as features of translation); process models, which represent change (from state A to state B) over a time interval (although the process is not necessarily linear) and allow us to understand decision-making in translation and cognitive factors influencing this process; and causal models, which aim to explain why translations are the way they are by reference to three dimensions of causation: the translator’s cognition (translator’s knowledge, attitude, identity, skills), the translation event (translator’s brief, payment, deadlines) and the socio-cultural factors (ideology, censorship, cultural traditions, audience). Chesterman (2000:21) argues that the causal model is “the richest and most powerful” because it contains the other two models – linguistic and cognitive factors are taken as causal conditions, and effects at the linguistic and cognitive levels are recorded – and it encourages explanatory and predictive hypotheses. On a superficial level, we could say that the product-oriented methodologies described in Chapter 3 correspond to Chesterman’s comparative model; the process-oriented methodologies described in Chapter 4 to the cognitive one; the context-oriented methodologies described in Chapter 6 to the causal one; and participant-oriented methodologies might be mapped either onto a cognitive or causal model according to the precise focus of the research. However, as explained above, an underlying assumption of our approach is that there cannot be purely descriptive (comparative or procedural) research, because any (good) research necessarily takes into account possible explanations, and descriptions are never neutral. Therefore, another way of mapping our model onto Chesterman’s three types would be to classify it in its entirety as a causal model that recognizes three different dimensions of causality (linguistic, cognitive and contextual).

A rather complex issue that is necessarily brought to the fore by this mapping of models and which cannot be addressed in much detail here is the potentially different ways of understanding causality in the two approaches (Chesterman’s, as outlined in his 2000 publication, and ours). Our understanding is very broad: we simply suggest that empirical research needs to address questions of ‘why’ at some point in the research process. Sometimes explanations remain at the level of speculation but the research should at least point out potential avenues for further research which could explain the resu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Principles and ethics in research
• Chapter 3. Product-oriented research
• Chapter 4. Process-oriented research
• Chapter 5. Participant-oriented research
• Chapter 6: Context-oriented research: case studies
• Chapter 7: Conclusion: The research report
• References
• Index