From a target population to representative samples of translations and translators

ABSTRACT

This study examines representativeness by compiling a sample of translations for textual analyses and a sample of translators for interviews. The process of achieving representativeness is exemplified by reporting on each case. The investigation is grounded in ongoing research on the strategies of literary translation from English to Czech that combines comparative text analyses and biographical interviews. The research objective is to generalise the strategies to the level of Czech literary translation norms. It is thus necessary to work with samples that are (1) representative to allow for such a level of generalisation and (2) of sizes that enable feasible analyses and interviews (i.e. the samples are not too extensive). The applied methodology pursues the fulfilment of both conditions through the three following steps: (a) Determination of the target population size and calculation of the sample size through statistical methods, (b) creation of a representative sample through probability sampling, analysis, and description, and (c) purposive sampling to obtain samples of texts and translators that represent the research intent.

KEYWORDS:

• Representativeness
• translation norms
• translation strategies
• target population
• sample
• representative sample

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic and by Palacký University Olomouc under Grant IGA_FF_2019_031.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Zanettin (2013) more elaborately discussed the use of corpora in translation studies. On the basis of 20 examined studies, he provided surveys of the most frequently researched topics and the types and sizes of corpora used (26–27).

2. Alternatively, the ‘Katriak methodology‘.

3. This database uses the same classification of genres and sub-genres as the NLCR database while providing relevant data (e.g. ISBN, author’s name, translator’s name, original title, publishers, and years of publication of the ST and translation). The use of another database increased the degree of objectivity involved in the genre classification process.

4. Further discussion of the genre classification issue is beyond the scope of this study.

5. A more detailed account of the grounded theory method is beyond the scope of this study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic and Palacký University Olomouc [IGA_FF_2019_031].

Notes on contributors

Jitka Zehnalová

Jitka Zehnalová is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and American Studies of Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic, where she participated in implementation of the BA and MA study programmes English for Interpreting and Translation. She lectures in Translation Theory and Methodology, Translation Quality Assessment, Literary Translation, and Stylistics. In 2014, 2015, and 2016, she was Academic Visitor in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at Manchester University, UK. She is an Organising Committee Member of the international conference Translation and Interpreting Forum Olomouc and a Co-editor of the Olomouc Modern Language Series. Her research focuses on translation quality assessment and literary translation. She published chapters in scholarly monographs and articles in international journals in these areas, as well as several translations from English to Czech, including authors such as Gordon Graham and Jack Kerouac.

Helena Kubátová

Helena Kubátová is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Andragogy, and Cultural Anthropology of Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. She lectures in sociological theories and their development, sociological methodology, and sociology of the way of life and life style. In her research, she applies qualitative methodology, particularly the grounded theory and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Her research interests lie in the sociology of everyday life, in phenomenology and social stratification, and in the transformations of the Czech society after 1989. She is the Vice-Chair of the Czech Sociological Society, a member of the Editorial Team of the journal Historická sociologie, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Czech Sociological Publishing House. She published several monographs, chapters in monographs, and articles in journals, recently for example Research into Transformations in Everyday Life: Three methodological notes, Qualitative Sociology Review (2018).