Research:A Comparative Mixed-Methods Case Study to Explore the Revision of English-Chinese Translations on Wikipedia
This page documents a research project in progress.
Information may be incomplete and change as the project progresses.
Please contact the project lead before formally citing or reusing results from this page.
This project aims to explore the reasons behind volunteer translators making changes to existing translations on Wikipedia, a popular online encyclopedia which uses a ‘crowdsourcing’ approach, attracting online volunteer translators to translate its content. The research will investigate the factors that influence translators’ decisions to revise existing translations, such as the quality of translation (e.g., from machine translation), personal beliefs, and discussions with peers in online communities, etc. This study can help understand and identify the most influential reasons in the translation process and the cooperation process among Chinese Wikipedia editors. This case study is for Ms. Hanxuan Sun's PhD dissertation and related publications.
Methods edit
The methodological mechanism to do so is to conduct a mixed-methods case study to combine observational studies with a survey, interviews, and focus groups, which is a clear gap in previous studies in the discipline of Translation Studies.
Timeline edit
The study will be conducted according to the following proposed timeline:
1. Request for human research ethics approval: September 2023
2. Data collection: November 2023 to July 2024
3. Analysis of data: August 2024 to March 2025
4. Completion of dissertation: June 2025.
Policy, Ethics and Human Subjects Research edit
This research has been granted ethical approval by UNSW HREAP B: Arts, Architecture, Design and Law, https://research.unsw.edu.au/research-ethics-and-compliance-support-recs. The HC Ref No. is HC230358.
Individual identifiers will be removed from the data using the following methods:
Any direct and indirect identifiers will be removed during the transcription process. Identifying information will be replaced with codes based on the following system ‘P1’, ‘P2’, etc. Only the audio recording will be used for interviews and focus groups, so no photographs or videos will be stored. The master list for the de-identification will be stored separately to the de-identified data. Data will be stored for the duration of the study on the UNSW Data Archive (RDMP ID: H0408583), to which only the Chief Investigator and the Student Investigator will have access.
Results edit
Resources edit
References edit
Dombek, M. (2014). A study into the motivations of internet users contributing to translation crowdsourcing: the case of Polish Facebook user-translators (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin City University).
Hanson, W. E., Creswell, J. W., Clark, V. L. P., Petska, K. S., & Creswell, J. D. (2005). Mixed methods research designs in counseling psychology. Journal of counseling psychology, 52(2), 224.
Hautasaari, A. (2013). " Could someone please translate this?" Activity analysis of Wikipedia article translation by non-experts. In Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 945-954).
Moreno García, L. D. (2020). Researching the motivation of Spanish to Chinese fansubbers-A case study on collaborative translation in China. Translation, Cognition and Behavior, 3(2), 165-187.
Holmes, J. S. (1988). Translated! Papers on literary translation and translation studies. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi.
Jones, H. (2019). Wikipedia as a translation zone: A heterotopic analysis of the online encyclopedia and its collaborative volunteer translator community. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, 31(1), 77–97.
Saldanha, G., & O'Brien, S. (2014). Research methodologies in translation studies. Routledge.
Shuttleworth, M. (2017). Locating foci of translation on Wikipedia: Some methodological proposals. Translation Spaces, 6(2), 310-332.