Translation and Practice Theory

Maeve Olohan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781315514758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Translation and Practice Theory is a timely and theoretically innovative study linking professional practice and translation theory, showing the usefulness of a practice-theoretical approach in addressing some of the challenges that the professional world of translation is currently facing, including, for example, the increasing deployment of machine translation.

Focusing on the key aspects of translation practices, Olohan provides the reader with an in-depth understanding of how those practices are performed, as translators interact with people, technologies and other material resources in the translation workplace. The practice-theoretical perspective helps to describe and explain the socio-material complexities of present-day commercial translation practice but also offers a productive approach for studies of translation and interpreting practices in other settings and periods.

This first book-length exploration of translation through the lens of practice theory is key reading for advanced students and researchers of Translation Theory. It will also be of interest in the area of professional communication within Communication Studies and Applied Linguistics.

1

From product and process to practice

This chapter first traces the broad lines of the two paradigms that have dominated translation studies for many decades, namely product-oriented and process-oriented translation research. It then considers how translation studies has increasingly sought to centre the translator in sociological studies, a conceptual and methodological move that is also associated with the emergence of a small but growing body of empirical research focusing on translators as they work. I argue that this gradual move towards a practice-oriented perspective on translation can be further strengthened by drawing on practice theory, to explore more fully the implications of conceptualizing and researching translation as an embodied and materially mediated social practice.

Products, processes and people

Prototypical studies of translation analyse one or more translation products and abduce translator decision-making by comparing translations with source texts or by interpreting textual material with reference to other discourse. Many such studies look beyond the translations, researching the contexts of production and reception to look for possible explanation of the causes and effects of translation choices. Studies are motivated by a wide range of research questions and draw on diverse conceptual tools and theoretical frameworks to describe, explain and interpret features of translation products or translation-related phenomena, through analyses of source texts, translations, paratexts, reviews, etc. Such product-oriented studies are heavily represented in key journals and other publications.

In product-oriented research of this kind, translation scholars produce theoretically informed interpretations of documentary material. They usually do not elicit data from human actors involved in either translation production or reception but centre their analyses on those documentary datasets. Moreover, in most product-oriented studies of translations or paratexts, interim stages in translation production are elided; researchers only consider the translation, as end product. There is nascent interest in understanding what happens during the interim stages of production of translations, but documentary studies that focus on processes of production are still relatively rare. Munday (2013), for instance, analyses translation drafts and rounds of revisions to understand how the translation is cumulatively created. Siponkoski (2015) examines the textual traces of the negotiations between translators and editors in the production of the Finnish translations of four of Shakespeare’s plays in the 2000s, by two experienced and two less-experienced translators of Shakespeare. The negotiations are observed through more than 2,000 editorial comments added to the translation manuscripts. Bisiada (2018a; 2018b) questions the validity of conclusions from corpus-based studies where textual patterning is ascribed wholly to translators, ignoring the actions of other participants in production. He therefore studies the interventions of editors using a tripartite parallel corpus of articles from a business journal; the corpus comprises source texts, translators’ manuscripts prior to editing and the translations that are published after editing.

As with translation production, most studies of translation reception are conducted through documentary analysis of written reviews, thus focusing on both the end product of the translation practice and the end product of the reviewing practice. However, there is also some interest in processes of reception, seen in audiovisual translation research in particular. Here, experiments and measurement techniques such as eye tracking are used to study aspects of viewer reception of subtitled or dubbed audiovisual products as they are being viewed (Perego et al. 2016; Orrego-Carmona 2016; Secară 2017; Ameri, Khoshsaligheh and Farid 2018; Hu, O’Brien and Kenny 2020). These studies typically involve a combined focus on product and experimentally controlled process.

Studies of (cognitive) processes of translation production gained momentum in the 1980s through empirical research, mostly in the form of experiments under controlled conditions. Distinguishing itself from product-oriented studies, translation process research tended not to consider the product at all, or to treat it as only one of several sources of information about the process. The first wave of translation process researchers analysed concurrent or retrospective verbalizations captured in think-aloud protocols produced by participants as they translated or shortly afterwards (Krings 1986; Lörscher 1991; Tirkkonen-Condit 1991). As other data-capturing possibilities emerged, process researchers deployed technology to log keystrokes, capture screens or track the eye movements, gaze coordinates and fixations of translators while they translated. For overviews of methods and examples of current areas of focus, see Muñoz Martín (2016) and Lacruz and Jääskeläinen (2018). Independent and dependent variables (i.e., those being controlled or changed by researchers and those being tested or measured) may include one or more aspects of the physical translation environment, access to translation resources and technological tools, the texts to be translated, the rationale for the translation task, the time available for translation, the software and format in which the translation is produced, etc. These forms of experimental research yield a wealth of data which researchers use to draw inferences about the cognitive processes of individual translators. However, the controlled translation situation has tended to be quite different from the typical working environment of the professional translator, raising questions about how the findings relate to the day-to-day activities of professional translators and project managers (PMs). For this reason, some scholars have brought this experimental approach into the workplace; examples of their work are discussed in more detail in the next section.

Translation studies, having traditionally prioritized the translation product and the translation process, now increasingly brings the translator into the picture (Milton and Bandia 2009; Kinnunen and Koskinen 2010). The interest in the translator is characterized by research informed by social theories (Wolf and Fukari 2007; Tyulenev 2012; Buzelin and Baraldi 2016), with a significant proportion of studies drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s work to analyse, for example, the translator’s habitus and the characteristics of the fields in which translators act (Simeoni 1998; Vorderobermeier 2014; Hanna 2016).

Concomitant with a more sociological perspective, translation scholars are increasingly interested in interactionist research methods: see, for example, chapters dedicated to participant-oriented research methods in research methods guides (Saldanha and O’Brien 2014; Angelelli and Baer 2016). Distinct from their participation in experimental research, outlined earlier, and ethnographic research, discussed in the next section, human participants now sometimes figure in studies of translation – for example, when survey or interview methods are used to elicit translators’ recalled memories or post-hoc deliberations relating to specific translation decisions, or as a means of gauging reception on the part of text users, or to study trends or conditions of work.

Sociologically inspired research on translation tends to reflect heightened interest in the agency of the translator. Although emphasis is increasingly placed on translation as a social, communicative act, it often remains conceptualized as the outcome of the embrained action of an individual and thus still focuses on decisions or evaluations as reflected in a textual end product. As yet, relatively small numbers of studies place the performances of human actors – source text authors, translators, editors, publishers or others – centre stage as they act in naturally occurring settings of translation production. It is this small but growing set of workplace studies that are of most relevance here, and these will be highlighted in the following section.

Most workplace studies draw on methods used in ethnography. Those methods and their applicability in studies of practice will be examined in some detail in Chapter 8. At this point, it is useful to consider that ethnographic research generally commits to the following principles (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007, 4). It is research in the field, studying people and actions in their everyday contexts, as opposed to experimental studies under controlled conditions. It uses a variety of data sources but predominantly participant observation and informal conversation. Studies are small in scale and detailed; data collection is relatively unstructured, and the qualitative analysis of data yields descriptive, narrative accounts which seek to interpret the meanings of actions and practices (ibid.).

Workplaces

Two decades ago, Brian Mossop (2000) made a plea for research projects that would encompass the observation of professional translators, combined with interviews and assessments of the quality of translators’ outputs. Mossop believed that these studies would address the “curious gap in our knowledge about translation” (ibid., 40). Among other aspects, he proposed investigating the distributions and timings of work phases and tasks, and he hoped to be able to correlate different sets of procedures with quality or efficiency. However, he also suggested that studies like these could test various hypotheses about how translators’ procedures might be influenced by the text type, the translators’ general writing habits or the training they had received (ibid., 44–5). Based on extensive personal experience at the federal Canadian Translation Bureau, Mossop (2006) later writes about changes being experienced by translators as translation practices evolve, and he speculates about further technological and social changes that may be imminent. A key point highlighted by Mossop is that translation studies lacks systematic documentation of what happens at the translator’s workplace, where translations are produced, and that there would be great value in such research, not just for the obvious purpose of informing translation pedagogy but also to gain new theoretical insights on translation.

By this time, a few empirical studies of translation workplaces were already underway, or had recently been completed. Hanna Risku’s monograph, first published in 2004, drew on fieldwork in an Austrian translation company from a few years before. Kaisa Koskinen’s 2008 monograph reported on research in the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission, where she first worked as a translator and then revisited as a researcher. Hélène Buzelin (2006; 2007) published a set of articles in the mid-2000s based on ethnographic research on literary translation, conducted in publishing houses in Quebec. Those three projects serve as the foundation stones on which further ethnographic and workplace research in translation studies, including my own, has been built. Their methods and central themes are therefore described in more detail here.

Risku’s (2004; 2009) study involved approximately 48 hours of participant observation carried out by two researchers, alternating, over four weeks in a translation company in Vienna. The company specialized in technical documentation and outsourced their translation work, which meant that the focus of their in-house activities was project management. Risku describes the role of the researchers as “passionate participants” (2009, 111), neither detached nor engaged in carrying out central tasks for the company, but present and participating, e.g., by providing input or assistance when helpful. Prior to the workplace observations, interviews were conducted with a number of technical translators and technical authors. The interviews served to integrate the perspectives of a group of people who were not present in the workplace, and they also helped to identify key themes and questions for the research team to guide the subsequent fieldwork.

A key focus throughout the study was collaborative working between PMs and translators. Risku analyses the wide range of artefacts encountered in the translation company, categorizing them in terms of their functions: i.e., communication (telephone, email, fax, post), fulfilment of translation assignments (word processing and file conversion software, translation memory and termbases, dictionaries, Internet search tools, notes), administration (job sheets, folders, purchase orders, databases, checklists), archiving (storage media) and project management systems. She presents a detailed account of the coordination work done by the PMs in relation to the various other actors involved in the translation production networks, and also examines workflows and information flows in the company. A final area of focus is that of allegiances and alliances: Risku writes of “shifting communities” (2009, 230) to delineate how the PMs dynamically shift their alignments between translators and clients as they work through different tasks and situations.

Moving from private-sector LSP to an institutional setting, Koskinen’s (2008) study focuses on translators and their texts in the Finnish translation unit of the European Commission’s DGT. Having worked in this unit as a translator for 18 months, Koskinen later returned to carry out research there, following one document as it went through the drafting process, and observing and interviewing translators over the course of a week. She describes her prior period of working inside the organization as giving her a kind of “double agent” status, or an insider--outsider position. On the one hand, it helps her to counter criticisms of engaging in “ethnographic tourism”, given the brief period of subsequent observation. On the other hand, that position, entailing some degree of familiarity and loyalty to those being studied, presents certain difficulties and ambiguities, of which Koskinen is self-reflexively aware.

Koskinen’s focus is on the concept of institutional translation, which few scholars had studied up to that point. In considering how to investigate this concept, she identifies two aspects: translation as a textual activity, studied through analysis of source and target texts, and the institutional context, studied as social action (2008, 35). Of primary interest for Koskinen is the question of the “professional identities and cultural affiliations of the translators”, their perceptions of their institutional roles and loyalties (ibid., 40). She refers here not to the translators’ individual identities, but rather to their social identity as an occupational group. This issue of identification, in particular, is posited as being more complex for EU translators than for others because the translators’ professional task is to bridge the gap between those inside and those outside the institution (ibid., 47). Moreover, the identification of in-house translators with the institution for which they speak all the time through the texts produced is likely to be stronger and more difficult to break than a connection that a freelance translator might have to an institution for which they translate less frequently. Other factors influencing identification in this specific context are pinpointed, including the support offered by the institution in relocating translators’ families, providing education for children, healthcare, insurance, etc.

Koskinen (2008) first explores the institutional setting of the Commission and translators’ role and affiliations within it by studying the environment and its norms and regulations, through EU documentation and participant observation. Here she pays particular attention to the DGT’s mission statements and the material environment of the Finnish translators: the Jean Monnet building in Luxembourg, and more specifically the area accommodating the 28 translators of the Finnish unit. She also considers what it is like for those translators to live in Luxembourg’s EU bubble.

Second, Koskinen (2008) sees the focus group method as a way of moving beyond her own experience to gain an understanding of the professional group of translators and their group identity, status and affiliations. Through analyses of focus groups and questionnaires, Koskinen addresses a number of themes, including the perceived ambivalent relationship between translators and other officials, i.e., those who draft documents and make use of the translation service but who occupy the same professional status and salary level as translators (ibid., 91). Other issues addressed are extent of socialization to the profession and the institution, perception of readers of the translations and the issue of readability, and the expatriate experience.

Finally, by analysing a translated text, Koskinen aims to uncover how “institutional processes and practices are inscribed within the text” and how the institution’s identity is constructed by the texts (Koskinen 2008, 61). She traces the drafting process of a Communication, through four preliminary drafts in English and Finnish translations, and notes two particular tendencies. On the one hand, some translation shifts are motivated by a desire to clarify and enhance readability (for example, through explicitation). On the other hand, some shifts “institutionalize” the text, by foregrounding the institution’s role while diminishing the visibility of other actors, or by adding favoured EU terminology and expressions, for example. Koskinen concludes that these processes of clarification and institutionalization pull in opposite directions, and that the translators, like others involved in the drafting, behave as institutional actors (Koskinen 2008, 147).

A contrasting conceptual approach to the workplace is taken by Hélène Buzelin (2006; 2007) in her research on the production processes of literary translation publishing houses in Quebec. She draws on Bruno Latour’s (2005) actor-network theory (ANT) to inform her ethnographic account of this translation activity. Adhering to the ANT principle of “follow the actors”, over a period of nine months Buzelin interviews principal human actors (translators, senior editor, general director, rights manager) and peripheral human actors. She also observes key meetings and analyses artefacts, including the translation contract, preliminary versions of the translation, promotional material and documents relating to the translation’s reception. The story she relates about the production of the translation (Buzelin 2006) provides a “thick description” (Geertz 1973) of the cooperation between actors in a specific literary translation production, but also highlights the ways in which the actors cope with and negotiate the specificities of their commercial, economic and political settings.

In addition to my own investigations, a number of other studies have been conducted at the workplaces of translators over the past decade or so. Some take an ethnography-inspired approach and use a combination of observations and interviews to study aspects of translation practices, notably how tools are used and how various kinds of interactions proceed. Other studies focus on similar themes, if broadly defined, but use a mixed-methods approach that typically involves deploying the tracking and measuring tools more common in experimental process research settings – eye tracking, screen capture, keystroke logging – alongside data and analyses of a more qualitative kind. Thus, the ecological validity of process-focused experimental research is strengthened by studying such processes in the workplace. The studies come closer to translation as it occurs on a daily basis, although the methodological apparatus and the need to control certain aspects of tasks means that settings may not be wholly naturalistic. Some pertinent examples serve to illustrate typical methodological decisions and thematic focus.

Kuznik (2016) and Kuznik and Verd (2010) conduct workplace studies of in-house translators in a manufacturing company in Poland in the mid-2000s. These include a qualitative analysis of interview data but also of records related to work processes, including a translator’s self-observation of his work processes over a 19-day period. Drawing conceptually on the sociology ...