Chapter 3 Methodology
In this chapter, the research approaches and discussions are presented throughout. Owing to the particularity of the database, it is necessary to adopt different approaches to deal with two types of data; that is, firsthand information with regard to the translation task and, sample texts for analysis to ascertain strategies involved. The discussion of adopting mixed methodology comes after the presentation of methodologies.
3.1 Data Collection and Analysis
This section contains data collection and analysis. The data comprised two types of information, including the sample analysis and interview information. The former aimed to locate particular translation strategies applied in the course of translation, while the latter examined these strategies and explored other non-textual factors in the translation practice.
3.1.1 Case study Approach
News translation refers to the translation in news reports, which makes itself one category distinct from the other translation tasks owing to its characteristics (Ho, 2001; Cheng, 2004). This type of translation, also referred to as “news edit-translation”, involves other stages including research, writing, editing, revising and so on, a distinctive feature that has been discussed in previous chapters. And Cheng proposed that the final product of such editing may be expressed, written or printed in either language or both languages (1994, 1996). In the field of practice, most of the news translations seen in Taiwan are from English to Chinese. Owing to
into the translation task per se, as it is one of the three local English newspapers targeting English readers in Taiwan. Meanwhile, the Opinion Page of Taipei Times provides the mere translations of opinion articles from other Chinese language sources, where little intervention was involved. This is another significant factor in adopting the Opinion Page of Taipei Times as the case study for the current research.
3.1.2 In-depth Interviews and Text Analysis
In the present study, the first-hand information came from in-depth interviews with the translators in Taipei Times. Background information on the newspaper was gathered through various other sources, including the paper’s official website and other previous studies. In addition to the information about the newspaper, it is necessary to investigate the strategies employed in the translations. To do so, articles published in the Opinion Page were gathered in the course of three months.
The source texts were also collected so as to be juxtaposed with the target texts in the analysis. The analysis of sample texts maintained another critical method of the present study. Approaches involved aimed to uncover the strategies and factors involved in the production of translation.
3.2 Research Data
The data for the present study give information at two levels. First is the textual information compiled from text analyses. These results helped to portray the strategies applied in the translation process. Moreover, the strategies made the ground for the interviews with translators of Taipei Times. The second type of information of the current study came from the in-depth interviews. The interviews aimed to examine the strategies and explore non-textual factors in translation.
3.2.1 Data Collection Process
The data collection process of this study was mainly divided into two phases.
Prior to the interviews, the collection of sample texts dated from January to March, 2005, during when both translations and source texts were collected through newspaper, websites and internet sources. In addition, background information of Taipei Times was gathered via two main sources, the former its official website and
the other, various other sources, from previous research findings on this newspaper to discussions on the newspaper. Moreover, in order to obtain detailed information of how translations were done for the Opinion Page, three in-depth interviews were scheduled with three translators of different backgrounds in the translation team.
The translation section of Taipei Times holds a staff of six translators, three Taiwanese and the other of other nationalities. In order to depict a comprehensive picture of the team, the interviewees included both Taiwanese and foreign translators. The interviews were semi-structured that followed an outline and took around an hour each.
3.2.2 Sample Text analysis
The present study incorporates the nine strategies put forth by Cheng in her studies published in the book Translation for the Media (2004). Cheng proposed that news translation not only offers information on the original texts to the target readers, it also internalized or domesticate foreign cultures for the target language society (2004:75). In English-to-Chinese translation, Cheng suggested nine strategies for translators to handle source texts; including addition, omission, repetition, cutting, transposition, modulation, annotation, adaptation and parody (2004:
76-80). Detailed discussion of these strategies is listed below.
Addition, (or amplification, suggested by Cheng) is an approach that adds information other than what the original texts suggest. Cheng further subcategorize addition into five types, including conceptual addition, structural addition, logical addition, rhetorical addition and background information addition. Most of the additions seen in news translation are out of needs to clarify or illustrate, especially concepts, ideas or terms that are new to the target culture. According to Cheng, logical addition occurs to mend logical insufficiency. Readers are expected to better follow the author’s chain of thought with logical additions. In the sample analysis, logical addition is applied to add in subjects back into the English translation, illustrated by the next example. Structural addition, unlike logical addition, adds information that mends structural insufficiencies according to the needs and requirements of the target language. This strategy make explicit the unspoken words or information that are familiar to the source text readers yet new to the target text readers. Conceptual addition illustrates new information added to explain new concepts that has yet to be familiar to the target language readers. Moreover, rhetorical addition serves as a rhetorical device that often characterizes the translator’s personal style. Adding expressions that do not appear in the source texts, this strategy not only demonstrates the translator’s writing style but also the attitude of treating the source text, drawing on the degree of alteration presented by way of rhetorical addition. Lastly, background information addition puts in extra information regarding the context where the source text is based. The most frequent background information addition adds in solid details such as historic backgrounds and short explanations of abbreviations. By putting back background information, the target readers are expected to achieve better comprehension reading culturally specific texts.
2. Omission
Omission, on the other hand, is opposite to addition yet develops in the same vein. In order to make clear the information and message in the source texts, this omission strategy trims down the excess bits so as to facilitate comprehension for target readers. Omission is also subcategorized into conceptual, structural, logical, rhetorical and background information omission.
3. Repetition
The third strategy, repetition, occurs specifically to English-to-Chinese translation. To highlight certain idea or point in the original text, repetitions are commonly seen in Chinese writings. In translations, this same strategy is thus applied so as to emphasize certain information.
4. Cutting
According to Cheng, the fourth strategy, cutting, occurs owing to syntactical difference between English and Chinese languages, long English sentences are cut into several shorter sentences in Chinese translations (2004:77).
5. Transposition
Transposition (or conversion suggested by the author) indicates the changes in forms at syntactic, lexical and rhetorical levels, such as parts of speech or verb tense.
The change in the manners of speaking (from positive to negative and vice versa) also makes another example of this strategy.
6. Modulation
Modulation refers to a shift of focus, which is mostly subject to the needs and
done in various ways, including explicitation and conceptualization.
7. Annotation
Annotation, suggested by the author, is similar to addition that brings extra information to the translation. The annotations seen in news translation are often explanatory notes in parentheses after transliteration, which provide instant information to illustrate the new concepts introduced in the translation.
8. Adaptation
Adaptation, proposed here by Cheng, is “an applicable approach to overcome language barriers” (2004:78). Cheng suggests that adaptation occurs when translators are not able to locate equivalents in the target language. Whether the messages be cultural information or imageries, it is likely that translators abandon the literal translation approach and paraphrase or substitute with the original another term with similar meaning in the target culture.
9. Parody
Lastly, parody (or “imitation” suggested by the author) usually applies to translation in other media rather than newspapers. Using completely different renditions, imitation aims to create the same effect that source texts users have among the target readers. The form, style and language of the translation are likely to be completely different from the original. However, as long as the message is fully conveyed in a creative and attractive manner and strikes a spontaneous response among the target readers, the translation is considered successful. In this regard, parody is a strategy that is often seen among commercial and advertisement translations.
The text analysis juxtaposed the source and target texts in a table. Close comparison was made at the sentence level to see if any difference occurred in the translation. The detailed tables were presented in appendices I and II, showing two basic types of source texts and their corresponding translation.
In order to present the results in an explicit manner, graphs and tables were made to show the frequency of each applied strategy. There was a bar chart that aimed to portray the phenomenon of application. The statistics and the charts served to amplify the findings of the text analyses.
3.2.3 Design of Interview
In the present study, in-depth interviews were conducted to obtain firsthand information in the translation process. In order to have a comprehensive understanding of the operation, interviews were semi-structured with open-ended questions, which allowed the respondents to answer freely and left more opportunities to discuss relevant situations.
Each interview covered a standard set of questions. Interviewees were asked to give detailed answers to the standardized questions so as to obtain in-depth information according to individual situations. Follow-up questions were brought up regarding the answers given. Interviewees were encouraged to elaborate more on the questions in relation to their personal experiences. The interview format was structured beforehand so as to cover certain topics. The following section presents the outline for the semi-structured interview:
∗ Translator’s personal background (including age, education background, duration in the current position)
article. What is your workload? How long does it take for an article to go from translation to publication?)
∗ Process of translation (e.g. who chooses the text, how much time is given to one task, any discussion made with the author, etc.)
∗ Terminology Translation (Do you usually follow the recognized translation or you create one for Taipei Times specifically? Why?)
∗ How do you resolve disputes with your editor?
∗ What do you do when the result of certain assigned job is not satisfying?
∗ What kind of translation is likely to be altered? Have you ever adopted the following strategies when you translate (addition, omission, repetition, cutting, transposition, modulation, annotation, adaptation and imitation)?
3.3 Discussions of methodology
Case studies attempt to explore a social phenomenon by examining people or organizations that represent it (McIntyre, 1996: 184). Taipei Times, being the largest local English newspaper, speaks to both target language readers and Taiwanese readers. Interviews of the current study and polls conducted by Taipei Times all suggested that the readers of Taipei Times did not merely cover English readers. One of the interviewees disclosed that students of university level tend to make another reader profile for language learning purposes. In this regard, opting Taipei Times as the research object for case study makes way for the investigation of Chinese-to-English news translation practice in Taiwan.
Interviews in the present study were semi-structured interviews. A standard set of questions made it easier to collect information on translation processes among the interviewed translators. In addition, these questions are open to different responses and allow more follow-up questions to explore individual differences and
preferences. The analysis of qualitative method is the key to its validity and leads to the concern of objectivity. In the present study, interviews also provided important information of the working process, which maintained undisclosed to people outside of the newspaper. However, qualitative method maintains a challenge to researchers, as Potter suggested (1996), “In qualitative research, of course, the distinction between data collection and data analysis may not be clear-cut. In practice, for example, as a series of interview progressed, the researcher would often be creating, testing and modifying analytic categories as an iterative process, such that data analysis might be considered ‘an organic whole that begins in the data-gathering stage and does not end until the writing is complete’.” (Potter, 1996: 120) Thus this highlighted the importance of the researcher’s interpreting the qualitative data with caution.
Although subjectivity might occur, qualitative methods are still the best way to get the insiders’ perspective or the actor’s definition of the situation (Punch, 1998).
To sum up, there were a number of reasons that the present study adopted mixed methodology. Using text analysis and interview, the analysis serves as the basis for interview and questions were made accordingly. The interview results served to examine and fortify the observations made. Lastly, interviews also offered perspectives on the non-textual factors involved in the process of translation, which were no where else to be obtained.
