The aim of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology is to act as a reference tool for researchers on a broad range of methodological issues pertaining to the discipline of translation studies. It is composed of essays by leading scholars on a wide range of methodological topics with the ultimate goal of helping researchers to develop their own methodology, depending on their research interests. Importantly, the editors note that it is not intended as a detailed guide on how to conduct research in translation studies; there are, as they point out, existing publications that have this explicit aim.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I is entitled “Internal approaches”, Part II “Interdisciplinary approaches” and Part III “Methods and contexts”. Part I contains two chapters, one on “Action/skopos theory” by Christiane Nord and one on “Descriptive translation studies and polysystem theory” by Alexandra Assis Rosa. The latter provides a useful discussion on how DTS and polysystem theory relate to one another; the former is mainly a description of the origins of skopos theory that could be sourced in many other publications.
Part II contains sixteen chapters, ranging in topic from “Anthropology and cultural translation” to “Semiotics”, “Corpus linguistics” and “Narrative theory”. This list provides just a flavour of the very varied subjects that are covered in Part II. Part III contains eleven chapters. This part, as its name suggests, is more explicitly focused on “methods” while the two earlier parts focus more on conceptual “approaches”. Part III contains chapters on topics such as “Research data”, “Ethnographic research”, “Translation and accessibility: The translation of everyday things” and “Interpreter education and training”, again to give just a flavour of the variety of topics in this rich volume.
Chapters mostly follow a similar structure with an introduction and literature review on the topic, giving an overview of research carried out to date using the specific approach, then moving on to contexts of application, to critical issues and topics, and finally to recommendations for practice. Each chapter has a very useful “Further reading” section with four entries, each of which are briefly annotated to explain why they are being recommended. The list of references provides a rich resource from which anyone interested in a specific methodological approach can build their knowledge. However, there is also variability in structure across chapters. For example, some chapters put the “Recommendations for practice” before the “Critical issues and topics” while some chapters have no recommendations section. While there are probably legitimate justifications for such variability within topics, this reviewer would prefer to see more consistency in chapter structure, especially in a handbook. This consistent approach to chapter organisation would be particularly helpful for early career researchers who are seeking to develop their own methodology, as per the stated objective of the book.
Part I (“Internal approaches”) is presented by the editors as representing “indigenous research positions” (4). The structure seems to imply that only two methodological approaches have organically grown out of translation studies and both of these were proposed some time ago. Is this something worth reflecting on by the discipline? Can translation studies only claim two “indigenous” methodological approaches, with no internal methodological innovation, over decades?
It would seem that having a whole part dedicated to only two chapters, with sixteen and eleven chapters in the other parts creates an unnecessary imbalance. How Part II (“Interdisciplinary approaches”) differs substantially from Part III (“Methods and contexts”) is rather unclear. Interdisciplinarity is not devoid of method or context, after all. Having said this, it is notoriously difficult to categorise and organise discussions of research methods. Differentiation between quantitative and qualitative approaches is challenging, a dichotomy typically found in research methods literature in general, as portrayed in chapter 20 by Mellinger and Hanson when they discuss “research data”. Recognising that such challenges pertaining to categorisation exist, this is a very minor quibble about the overall structure.
This collection provides the discipline with a very rich resource for methodological learning. Its strength lies in the diversity of topics covered, offering a broad palette that will most definitely be useful for anyone who is interested in delving into specific topics and who would like to get an overview of how an approach or method has been utilised in translation studies so far, what the critical issues are, what high level recommendations are being given for using this method, as well as a lead on where to go next. As stated by the editors, it is not a “how to” type volume, so those interested in implementation will have to seek knowledge on that elsewhere.
Despite its 510 pages and, notwithstanding the fact that one cannot include absolutely everything in one volume, it is worth noting that some of the topics currently being debated in the international research community do not receive much spotlighting in this volume. The first of these topics is open research. Open access in relation to publishing, for example, is mentioned very briefly in chapter 2; chapters 20 and 27 mention open science and the open data movement; chapter 24 open-source software and open standards for text encoding, and chapter 29 open educational resources. However, given its accelerating and increasing importance, at least in some research landscapes, how translation studies can contribute to the open research movement in its methodological approaches, whether for conceptual or empirical research (see chapter 18), is arguably deserving of more discussion. The engaged research paradigm, and how to incorporate this into methodological approaches, is not given precedence either, with the exception of a fleeting reference to engaged ethnography in chapter 21. Translation studies research is frequently carried out through a critical societal lens and is concerned with important themes such as equality, diversity, rights, and ethics, so it is not unjustified to expect more concrete foregrounding of research methodologies that engage directly with stakeholders. Likewise, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which now contribute substantially to research funding agendas internationally, are addressed, but infrequently. For example, in chapter 18 the SDGs are mentioned in relation to the democracy of knowledge, and they also gain attention in chapter 28 on the topic of accessibility where Josélia Neves states that: “I see translation as an enactment of Sustainable Development Goal 10 of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015) in that it promotes inclusion and social justice” (453). Related to this last point, the societal impact of the discipline’s research agenda and findings and, by extension, our methodological approaches is referred to on pages 36 and 39. Other forms of impact (e.g. impact of translators’ choices, the ethical impact of research findings, trans- or interdisciplinary impact) are mentioned only fleetingly. The above observations could be construed as favouring applied over basic research in a volume on methodology, but, as Salah Basalamah argues in his chapter in this volume on “Conceptual research in translation studies”, conceptual research “allows all empirical research to exist and be given direction and a theoretical framework” (283). In fact, the two cannot be neatly separated or divorced from one another — all forms of research serve a purpose. What that purpose is and who should benefit from that research, whether just the researcher, their institution, the publisher who publishes their work, students, or societal stakeholders, depends, of course, on one’s philosophical viewpoint.
In conclusion, I have no doubt that this rich volume will be very useful for many researchers. One can only hope that the discipline will engage more explicitly with the challenges mentioned above from a research methods perspective.
Sharon O’Brien
Dublin City University
E-mail: sharon.obrien@dcu.ie