Negotiating identity roles during the process of online collaborative translation: An ethnographic approach

ABSTRACT

This article examines the processes of online collaborative translation, focusing on the various roles the participants play through their mutual engagement. To enhance our understanding of collaborative translation, Yeeyan, the platform where it takes place, is theorized as a broad community of practice consisting of multiple sub-communities. Supported by Yeeyan's participatory mechanisms, the participants engaging in the collaborative translation actively perform specific roles. Drawing on ethnographic data collected from fieldwork in Yeeyan, a set of materials are analyzed in a holistic manner: online materials documenting Yeeyan's community structure, five Yeeyaners' profiles, parts of the translation manuscripts and two excerpts of the interactions between the participants. The analysis, premised on the theory of communities of practice, reveals that collaborative translation in online translation communities like Yeeyan is an experience of meaning negotiation through which the participants play a variety of roles at different stages as they engage in the shared practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaborative translation
• translation process
• communities of practice
• meaning negotiation
• identity roles
• ethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Chuan Yu is a lecturer in translation studies at Monash University. Her research lies at the intersection of translation studies, anthropology, and media and communication studies. Her current research focuses on collaborative translation, online translation communities, the use of ethnographic methodologies in TS research, citizen media and Chinese internet research. She writes and publishes in the areas of translation and social sciences, discussing online translation theoretically and methodologically. Chuan also undertakes translation work and teaches translation.

ORCID

Chuan Yu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0380-5122

Notes

1 Note that there are other criteria against which collaborative translation may be approached, including the initiating body of the project, i.e. institutions or the users (Jiménez-Crespo 2017, 18–31); the cause of the practice, i.e. non-profit or for-profit (McDonough Dolmaya 2011, 99); the nature of the agent, i.e. “human-to-human” or “human-to-machine” collaboration (O’Brien 2011, 17–20); and the nature of the translated materials, i.e. audio-visual or textual (Yu 2016).

2 http://www.hsilai.org/en/eba/. Accessed April 19, 2019.

3 http://www.ecocn.org/portal.php. Accessed April 19, 2019.

4 Figure based on Spradley (1980, 34).

5 All English annotations in the figures are in my translation.

6 https://www.wjx.cn/report/2410069.aspx. Accessed November 17, 2019.

7 The legality of crowdsourcing (translation) has been a concern in the digital age. In the case of Yeeyan, the translations published commercially are carried out in collaboration with the copyright holders. For example, it had collaborations with The Guardian who authorized it to translate and publish selected articles in Chinese. As for its digital translation and publication project, i.e. Yeeyan Gutenberg Project, the STs are in the public domain. With regard to other translations, the practices follow the principle of fair use (or fair dealing). The full information of the source, including the author of the ST, publisher, and URL, is clearly stated at the bottom of each page. Admittedly, copyright in crowdsourcing and user-generated translation can be problematic and is an issue that needs more attention.

8 One of the most meticulous and thorough taxonomies of the differences between revising, editing and proofreading is Mossop’s (2014). His overall categorization distinguishes these three activities as different tasks in the translation process. According to him, revising is primarily checking errors by using various parameters (e.g. accuracy, completeness, logic, etc.) in the translation; editing is mainly improving the text, and also includes correcting errors; and proofreading is also checking errors, yet within the edited text so as to assist with the next procedure – printing. This is different from the distinctions between those tasks in some online translation initiatives, such as Wikipedia (McDonough Dolmaya 2015) and Yeeyan’s community collaborative translation activities discussed here. A detailed comparison is omitted due to space constraints.

9 Participants are anonymized throughout the article. The pseudonym Carah is used here to refer to the author of this article who initiated this project with her informant at the stage of active participation. I became one of the project initiators for this project so as to learn about how an ST was selected by more than one participant and how to organize a collaborative task in Yeeyan.

10 The participants’ conversations were originally undertaken in Chinese and translated into English by the author who adopted a verbatim translation approach.

11 Data were extracted from the participants’ Yeeyan profiles at the time upon the completion of this collaborative project at the end of 2015.