Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-188)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2004. / Zhi dao jiao shi: Jin Shenghua, Wang Hongzhi. 880-05 Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-238)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of English Language and Literature, March 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2008. / Includes .doc file (355 KB) of a translation of Marie Vieux-Chauvet's novel Les Rapaces (1984) by Carolyn Shread. Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-82).

This thesis presents a qualitative study on the processes of user-generated crowdsourced collaborative translation in Yeeyan, China’s largest online translation community. Collaborative translation is still a relatively emergent area of scholarship and research so far has focused mainly on audiovisual translation practice. Studies which focus on the co-production of written texts mostly provide only a fragmented picture and treat collaborative translation as a linear process. In this thesis, I examine the translation initiated and undertaken by two or more volunteer translators who collaboratively produce a translated text, focusing on how they interact with each other, who they are, why they participate, and what meanings they give to their behaviour. Adopting an ethnographic methodology, I have conducted longitudinal in-depth fieldwork in Yeeyan, using the methods of participant observation and interactive interview. Three types of data are collected: 1) fieldnotes; 2) the material resources archived on the Yeeyan website and the translation manuscripts; and 3) elicited interview data. After my preliminary thematic analysis, I undertake a micro-level discourse analysis, examining the participants’ behaviours, decision-making processes, emerging identity roles and perceptions on competence as they unfolded during the collaboration process. Primarily informed by Wenger’s “communities of practice” theory (CoP theory), the analysis reveals that Yeeyan is first a participatory media platform which provides Chinese readers with access to knowledge and information not available in their mother language, as well as allowing its users to play an active role in the production and circulation of the media content. More profoundly, Yeeyan is an online CoP where a crowd of translators from different professional and disciplinary backgrounds interact with each other regularly for the shared practices they are passionate about and for the shared enterprises they care for. The findings suggest that the process of collaborative translation in Yeeyan is de facto an experience of meaning negotiation. First, competence in a CoP is obtained through mutual recognition from other members as a result of their active and continuous participation. Second, meanings in Yeeyan are not static, but are dynamically negotiated between the participants, depending on the genre of the text being translated, which specialized expertise the translators possess, how competent they are in the Yeeyan community, and what meanings they intend to give to their behaviours individually and collectively. Third, a CoP like Yeeyan is also a complex social learning system which consists of multiple interrelated sub-communities. Yeeyan members’ endeavour to solve translation problems and thereby increase their competence also contributes to forming a shared history of learning. Beyond these findings, this thesis also makes broader methodological and theoretical contributions. It demonstrates how the use of an immersive ethnographic methodology, hitherto seldom applied in the TS field, can provide more holistic insights into translators’ interactions, translation manuscripts and the entire collaboration process. The use of CoP theory offers us a new perspective that explains collaborative translation as a social practice through which – and to which – the participants ascribe meanings in the process of translating and interacting.

Taking into account the general approaches to ethics in the West, i.e. virtue ethics, deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics, aimed respectively at the agent, the act and the consequence, the study draws on Ricoeurian and Confucian concepts of reciprocity as the theoretical foundation for the development of the model. Ricoeurian reciprocity is employed for its theoretical strength in stressing reciprocity between equal parties while Confucian reciprocity is strong for its position on reciprocity between unequal parties, since translation tends to involve both equal parties and unequal participants. Confucian reciprocity is given more prominence because it does not preclude the possibility of a junzi-type role (junzi=jun zi/gentleman[-like]) on the part of the agents to work for larger missions or higher values even between unequal inter-actants for a higher reciprocity. As a highly complex area, translation ethics involves issues of texts, languages and cultures as well as individuals, collectivities and larger communities like nations. Good and evil can be done to them by translation and translators. Though efforts to undertake translation ethics have been intensive, a critical examination of the existent models and views finds that they are not comprehensive or effective enough to address the complex issues involved. The dissertation attempts to overcome this insufficiency by striving to formulate a more comprehensive model, a model with greater explanatory power, named the 'Ethics of Reciprocity in Translation' model. Reciprocity presupposes pairs of entities and parties while any translation project involves such pairs. In a translation project, there is the translator the agent, translating the process and translation the product, and the model of 'Ethics of Reciprocity in Translation' sees the undertakings of translation from the perspective of harm and benefits incurred in and by translation to the pairs of entities and parties involved in or affected by a translation project, covering all these three dimensions. Taking into account the general approaches to ethics in the West, i.e. virtue ethics, deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics, aimed respectively at the agent, the act and the consequence, the study draws on Ricoeurian and Confucian concepts of reciprocity as the theoretical foundation for the development of the model. Ricoeurian reciprocity is employed for its theoretical strength in stressing reciprocity between equal parties while Confucian reciprocity is strong for its position on reciprocity between unequal parties, since translation tends to involve both equal parties and unequal participants. Confucian reciprocity is given more prominence because it does not preclude the possibility of a junzi-type role (junzi=君子/gentleman[-like]) on the part of the agents to work for larger missions or higher values even between unequal inter-actants for a higher reciprocity. The study argues that the ethics of reciprocity in translation centres on a translation project, whereby active parties such as individual persons, collectivities and nations, and passive entities including texts, languages and cultures ought not to be harmed but rather mutually benefited. They constitute the content of the ethical reciprocity. To achieve such reciprocity, translators and other agents are faced with three general alternatives: not-translating, 'equivalent' translation and manipulated translation, depending on the text type and quality as well as the value the translation project aims to establish. The model thus developed is therefore dynamic, integrated and multi-layered, combining virtue ethics and principle ethics to cover a wider scope of whether to, what to and how to translate. This model of 'ethics of reciprocity in translation' is tested to three sets of cases for its validity and possibilities: cases of ethical reciprocity in translation, cases of ethical non-reciprocity in translation and cases where the model is not relevant. In each set, three examples of literary, semi-literary and non-literary texts are analysed respectively. Though not intended to apply in all translation projects, the model would hopefully make a valid and comprehensive one on the ethics of translation in general contexts.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

M.A. (Applied Linguistics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract