This document outlines areas of research in translation studies, including text analysis and translation quality assessment, genre translation, multimedia translation, translation history, and the translation process. It discusses both conceptual and empirical research. Empirical research uses methodology like quantitative and qualitative methods, case studies, corpus studies, text analysis, and interviews. Research questions can be exploratory to understand what is happening, or descriptive to analyze translations and understand patterns. Hypotheses are used if researchers want to generalize findings.

1. Research in Translation
Studies
Sugeng Hariyanto
Source: Jenny Williams, Andrew Chesterman, The Map: A Beginner's
Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies by

2. 1. Areas of Research
1.1 Text Analysis and Translation
Source Text Analysis (semantic, syntactic, stylistic)
Comparison of TT and ST
- equivalence in various aspects.
• The aspects can be derived from certain theories, e.g.
linguistics
• 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 translators)
have solved the problem, what translation strategies
they have used.
• Or start with specific strategy.

3. • 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.

4. • Translation with Commentary (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.

5. 1.2 Translation Quality Assessment
• Evaluative assessment of translation work
• Approaches
– Source-oriented (equivalence degree of the
translation)
– Target oriented (degree of naturalness of the
target text by comparing with parallel text)
– Translation effect-oriented on client, general
readers, etc. (can it meet the expectation)

6. 1.3 Genre Translation
• Drama (person, purpose, process, product)
• Poetry (person, purpose, process, product)
• Prose Fiction (person, purpose, process,
product)
• Religious Texts (person, purpose, process,
product)
• Children's Literature
• Tourism Texts
• Technical Texts
• Legal Texts

7. 1.4 Multimedia Translation
• Audiovisual texts are primarily
spoken texts - radio/TV
programmes, films, DVDs, videos,
opera, theatre - which are translated
either by revoicing or sur-/subtitling
(Luyken 1991).
• Revoicing
• subtitling

8. 1.5 Translation and Technology
• Evaluating translation software
• Software localization
• Effects of Technology
• Website Translation

9. 1.6 Translation History
• When? Where? Who? What? Why? How?
• When: specific time
• Where: specific place
• Who: the initiator, the translator, influencing
parties
• What: text to be or not to be translated
• Why: why a translation and not-translating is
done.
• How: How certain translation affect the history of
translation or target culture.

10. 1.7 Translation Ethics
• Ethics held by the translators (what should
be the good service of translation)?
• Cultural and ideological factors (power,
emancipation, gender, post colonialism,
nationalism, minority, cultural identity,
translator’s visibility)
• Codes of Practice (e.g. Code of Practice
of Indonesian translators)

11. 1.8 Terminology and Glossaries
• How to translate new words?
• How the translation of the new words
compared to ones proposed by Balai
Bahasa?

12. 1.9 Interpreting
• Conference interpreting (usually
simultaneous, in one direction)
• Liason interpreting, also known as
dialogue or community inter- preting
(usually bi directional)
• Court interpreting (usually bi directional).
• Person, purpose, process, product

13. 1.10 The Translation Process
• Workplace Studies (working lives and
conditions of professional translators.)
• Protocol Studies (to investigate the
translator's internal decision making
process, by using think aloud
methods or retrospective Interviews )

14. 1.11 Translator Training
• Curriculum Design (What to teach and
how to organize them)
• Implementation (content, delivery and
evaluation)
• Typical Problem Areas (universal problem,
language specific problems, students;
specific problems)
• Professional Dimension (How to introduce
the profession into the training program?)

15. 1.12 The Translation Profession
• Qualifications for membership/ membership categories
• The nature of the certification process (if one exists)
• The employment status of the members (freelance,
salaried translators in the private/public sector, part
time/full time?) and their specialism (technical, literary
etc.)
• The Association's code of ethics
• The benefits of membership
• The Association's role in translation policy
development at local, regional or national level
• The Association's programme of professional
development for members.

16. 2. Type of research
• Conceptual research
– To define or clarify concept, e.g. what translation
equivalence is, what is its relation to translation
quality, etc.
– Can be done by means of library study
• Empirical research
– To seek new data or information from observation
and experimentation to seek evidence which supports
or disconfirms hypothesis or generate new
hypothesis.
– Here you need to have sound theoretical framework

17. Characteristics of empirical research
• Can be general and be particular
– What makes a particular translation unique
– What are the general features shared by all
translations
• Describing and explaining
• Predicting, although not 100% correct
(although probabilistic in nature)
• Hypothesis, a tentative claim of observed
patterns or regularities

18. Methodology
• Quantitative – to count, compare statistically
– Goal: to make claims about universality, generality of
a phenomenon or feature.
– to say about regularities, tendencies, frequencies,
distribution, etc.
• Qualitative
– More subjective, may require empathy (interview),
imagination (discourse analysis), etc.

19. Methods
• Case study Vs experimental study
• Case study material: single translation,
single translator, single publisher, etc.
• Can be also “multi-site”
• Case study can be:
– Explanatory (why, how)
– Descriptive (what)

20. • Corpus studies
– Parallel
– Comparable

21. 2. Methodology
• Text/linguistic analysis (product)
• Think aloud protocol, immediate
retrospective (process)
• Interview (process and readers’ reaction)
• Questionnaire (to measure readers’
reaction)
• Observation
• Cloze-test (to measure readability)
• Corpus-based analysis (product)

22. Research questions (examples)
• Exploratory research questions:
• What was happening on the translation scene
in eighteenth century France?
• I wonder how professional translators actually
work today?
• What literature was translated from German to
French between 1740 and 1760, by whom,
and for which clients?
• What use does a particular sample of
professional medical translators make of
Internet resources?

23. Research question examples
• Descriptive research questions
• What is this translation like, compared to its original?
• How can I describe what the translations by this translator/of this
text type seem to have in common?
• How are these translations different from non-translated texts in
the target language?
• How has the translator dealt with place names?
• What are the relative frequencies of relative and main clauses in
these translations and these comparable non- translated texts?
• Why is this translation like this, with so many errors?
• Why are there so many more relative clauses in these
translations than I would have expected?
• Why was this novel translated and not that one?
• How did the general public react to this new translation of the
novel?
• Why did people react like that?

24. Do we need any hypothesis?
• Yes, if we want to generalize the findings
• No, if we do not want to generalize the
findings.