Translation Product and Process Data
Tatiana Serbina, Stella Neumann · 2021
During the past two decades, a growing body of research in empirical translation studies has relied on multimethod approaches. Some of these studies combine product and process data with the aim to create a link between the process of translation examined through experiments and the final translation product observed in some kind of corpus. However, process and product studies draw on quite different epistemologies: whereas process studies examine human translators, often using experimental designs eliciting controlled behavioral or neurological data, product studies investigate specimens of language use with the help of observational designs accessing authentic translations with much more limited control over the independent variable(s). Therefore, it might be reasonable to question whether such diverging epistemologies can be integrated at all. However, provided that studies account for the pitfalls of multiple research strategies, the integration of process and product approaches has the potential to pave the way towards understanding and conceptualizing translation in a comprehensive perspective, one that accounts not just for the cognitive processes in the individual translator, but also for the socio-cultural impact of translation. So, in addition to a pragmatic justification for combining methods in terms of enhancing or corroborating findings or compensating for the weaknesses of single methods, the combination of product and process research opens up the perspective towards an integrative conceptualization of translation that involves the entire translation workflow encompassing everything from the earliest stages of producing the draft translation as commissioned by a customer via any changes applied by proof-readers or editors to the final version consumed by members of the target language audience. The present chapter examines the types of knowledge that can be gained (or lost) by integrating product and process translation data.