The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology

Federico Zanettin, Christopher Rundle, Federico Zanettin, Christopher Rundle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781351658089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology provides a comprehensive overview of methodologies in translation studies, including both well-established and more recent approaches.

The Handbook is organised into three sections, the first of which covers methodological issues in the two main paradigms to have emerged from within translation studies, namely skopos theory and descriptive translation studies. The second section covers multidisciplinary perspectives in research methodology and considers their application in translation research. The third section deals with practical and pragmatic methodological issues. Each chapter provides a summary of relevant research, a literature overview, critical issues and topics, recommendations for best practice, and some suggestions for further reading.

Bringing together over 30 eminent international scholars from a wide range of disciplinary and geographical backgrounds, this Handbook is essential reading for all students and scholars involved in translation methodology and research.

1Methodology in translation studiesAn introduction

Federico Zanettin and Christopher Rundle

DOI: 10.4324/9781315158945-1

Methods, tools, procedures, and perspectives

This volume addresses methodological aspects of research on translation and interpreting processes, practices, and products. As such, it seems important to emphasise at the start of this introduction that this book is not about the procedures or the practical professional (or non-professional) tasks involved in producing a translation or performing an interpreting assignment. It is not, in other words, an extended coursebook in translation (unlike, e.g., the volumes in the Thinking Translation series, see, e.g., Hervey et al. 2006), or a practical handbook for aspiring professional translators (unlike, e.g., Robinson 1997; 2003). It is also not a book which provides a detailed guide to conducting empirical research in translation studies, though much advice about this can be derived from many of its chapters. Rather, The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology contains essays which provide detailed accounts of a broad range of methodological approaches adopted by researchers in the field of translation and interpreting. While it would be impossible to supply an exhaustive account of the different methodologies used in researching translation and interpreting, the essays in this handbook cover both well-established and more recent methods and paradigms.

Since translation research has evolved as an interdiscipline (Snell-Hornby et al. 1994), it has been influenced by methodological approaches as diverse as those from linguistics, comparative literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, sociology, philosophy, history, semiotics, computing, and cognitive studies, to name just a few. As researchers from different fields began to create a critical literature on translation, they brought in theoretical and methodological perspectives from their own disciplinary traditions. Furthermore, translation studies is characterised by a number of sub-disciplines, or areas of inquiry, for instance literary, religious, and audiovisual translation, or conference and community interpreting, and each of these sub-areas has also developed its own specific research approaches and methods. This diversity can already be perceived in the different names used by the authors in this volume for the discipline: thus, choosing to use either translation studies (TS) or translation and interpreting studies (TIS), for example, is indicative of a different outlook on the discipline and of a different epistemological development. Since these choices reflect the disciplinary identity of the contributors, we have not changed their preference for a single, consistent acronym.

The meaning of the word ‘methodology’ can be situated somewhere along a cline ranging from approaches or frameworks to methods, techniques, procedures, tools, etc. (see discussion in Saldanha and O’Brien 2013: 12–14). While approach and framework are terms used to refer to abstract theories and organisational principles, methods and techniques ‘refer to practical “tools” [used] to make sense of empirical reality’ (Saukko 2003: 8, quoted in Saldanha and O’Brien 2013: 13). Methodology implies the application of these theories and principles to actual research, that is it ‘refers to the wider package of both tools and a philosophical and political commitment that come with a particular research approach’ (ibid.). This volume attempts to describe and represent the range of approaches that come under the remit of translation and interpreting studies, some of which are based on methods and techniques and some of which are more focused on the theory that underpins a method (or methods), in a way that is both accessible and authoritative.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology is aimed at both students and scholars who wish to familiarise themselves with the main approaches and methods in translation and interpreting research. Though it offers plenty of theoretical background, its focus is on providing researchers with the state of the art concerning the methodological tools that are currently in use. In this way this volume is distinct, both in its focus and its scope, from other handbooks and encyclopaedias on translation studies which, while providing much useful information on translation research topics, only more briefly address methodological aspects of doing translation research.

A focus on methodology

There are many ways of approaching translation and interpreting as objects of study, and methodologies are often ‘built on a set of sometimes unarticulated assumptions and previously articulated givens and concepts that often are at odds with translation data’ (Flynn and Gambier 2011: 88). In order to navigate research territories, methodological considerations are needed as a way of interpreting the data and phenomena studied.

Research methodology in translation studies became an increasingly pressing concern after the discipline had consolidated itself in the final decades of the last century. Research Models in Translation Studies was one of the first publications (in two volumes) explicitly addressing methodological issues. The first volume (edited by Olohan in 2000) deals with textual and cognitive aspects of translation research, while the second (edited by Hermans in 2002) focuses on historical and ideological issues, and together they provide a particularly rich introduction to methodology in translation studies. Hatim’s (2001) Teaching and Researching Translation (a second edition of which was published in 2012) adopts an applied linguistics perspective. Although Hatim devotes several chapters to approaches from within translation studies (descriptive translation studies (DTS), skopos theory) and issues of power and ideology which had come to the fore in the discipline primarily as the result of research in cultural studies, the applied linguistics perspective is also apparent in that part of the book which is specifically concerned with translation teaching, and which discusses topics such as translation errors and text typologies. The Map. A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies (Williams and Chesterman 2002) is an essential publication which responded to the needs of the evolving discipline. Styling itself as a practical guide to the issues which scholars are likely to encounter when doing research on translation, this volume includes topics such as research hypotheses and questions, data analysis, and reporting results in writing and orally.

Like The Map, on which it builds, Saldanha and O’Brien’s Research Methodologies in Translation Studies (2013) adopts a navigational metaphor (of the compass) and focuses on empirical research, drawing on theories, frameworks, and concepts from several different disciplinary fields. Saldanha and O’Brien introduce a useful classification of types of research and related terminology (e.g., inductive, deductive, empirical, and experimental), provide advice on research ethics (e.g., informed consent and plagiarism) and on research communication and dissemination (e.g., writing a research report), discuss the theoretical assumptions that underpin any research project, and also offer a range of specific examples from translation studies research to illustrate how the different methodologies can be applied. To summarise interdisciplinary contributions in translation studies, Saldanha and O’Brien (2013) use a four-pronged classification, which is reminiscent of Flynn and Gambier’s four methodological foci in their essay ‘Methodology in Translation Studies’ (2011), namely discourses, practices, contexts, and actors. Saldanha and O’Brien’s distinction between methodological orientations based on the nature of the data (i.e., on whether these concern the products, the process, the participants of translation, or the wider social and cultural context in which translated texts are embedded) has proved very influential and the book has become a standard research guide.

While the publications mentioned so far consider translation studies as their subject of investigation, other works such as Schäffner’s (2004) Translation Research and Interpreting Research and Angelelli and Baer’s (2016) Researching Translation and Interpreting give equal prominence to both translation and interpreting. The main focus of Schäffner (2004) is on research topics and on the potential for interaction between translation and interpreting research. Angelelli and Baer’s volume provides an overview of the TIS field and its research traditions at the interface between theory and practice, in a book which is aimed at both students and practitioners, and which devotes considerable space to interpreting research.

There are some publications that are more specifically dedicated to methodology in interpreting studies (IS), one of the first being that by Gile et al. (2001), Getting Started in Interpreting Research: Methodological Reflections, Personal Accounts and Advice for Beginners. The volume is based on a 1997 research training seminar focusing on doctoral work on interpretation and provides very useful methodological advice on interpreting research, for both beginning researchers and their trainers and advisors. Studies addressing research models and methods in interpreting studies have increased since then, with books such as Hansen et al. (2009), Efforts and Models in Interpreting and Translation Research; Nicodemus and Swabey (2011), Advances in Interpreting Research; and Bendazzoli and Monacelli (2016), Addressing Methodological Challenges in Interpreting Studies Research. Another important volume, which offers young scholars valuable guidelines for conducting research specifically on interpreting (including preparing and publishing a doctoral thesis), is Hale and Napier (2013), Research Methods in Interpreting: A Practical Resource. This book is a step-by-step guide to conducting research in interpreting detailing various stages of a research project, in the tradition of Williams and Chesterman (2002). The authors aim to provide a comprehensive guide to research methods, and the book contains a number of interactive activities designed to allow researchers to define and refine research questions. They describe and discuss research methods such as questionnaires and survey data, ethnographic research, observational methods, and interviews, as well as experimental methods.

While a broad distinction between qualitative and quantitative approaches is generally highlighted in publications which deal with methodological aspects of research, in their volume Quantitative Research Methods in Translation and Interpreting Studies (2017) Mellinger and Hanson discuss the basis for rigorous quantitative research. Although the authors introduce the most common issues researchers face when designing a project, their main focus is the theoretical, statistical, and mathematical expertise needed to carry out quantitative analyses on TIS. New Empirical Perspectives on Translation and Interpreting, edited by Vandevoorde et al. (2020), also deals primarily with quantitative methods, including in experimental studies.

Mixed-method approaches have become increasingly popular in recent years, and their use in TIS is advocated in two interesting articles: ‘On Methodology: How Mixed Methods Research Can Contribute to Translation Studies’ by Lova Meister (2018), and ‘Mixed-Methods Research in Interpreting Studies: A Methodological Review (2004–2014)’ by Chao Han (2018). Mixed-method research (MMR) has emerged as an alternative to the traditional quantitative and qualitative approaches, and involves not just the use and combination of both, but also their integration in order to exploit their complementary strengths and overcome their non-overlapping weaknesses. MMR involves an iterative and cyclical approach to research which includes both inductive (qualitative) and deductive (quantitative) logic; and it uses an interactive approach in which different conceptual frameworks and methods reciprocally influence each other. Meister (2018), who investigates research practice at postgraduate level by looking at ten doctoral theses published between 1998 and 2012, argues that MMR integrates philosophical and co...