Position of the translator as an agent in website localization: The case of Turkey

Sinem Canim Alkan

Abstract


The rapid growth of e-commerce has contributed to the development of website localization activity as a major professional industry. Despite the high volume of website localization practices, there is little research on translators participating in website localization projects. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the position of the translator as an agent in website localization processes in Turkey. Interview method was used to collect data. Nine interviewees were interviewed face-to-face using interview forms in Istanbul between September 2011 and February 2012. In determining the corpus of interviews, maximum variation sampling was used. All of the interviewees took part in website localization processes as agents but in different positions. The conceptual and theoretical framework of the study comprised functional translation theories by Justa Holz-Mänttäri and Hans Vermeer, and Agency Theory. The study showed that translators in production networks experienced the problem of information asymmetry which affected their performance negatively. It is common to associate low levels of quality with the translator’s incompetence. This study suggested that when the translation/localization product fails to meet the expectations of the initiator, it is more than reasonable to look at not just the translator but the whole production network to find the source of problem.

Keywords


Agency; asymmetric information; qualitative research; translator’s position; website localization

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abdallah, K. (2010). Translators’ agency in production networks. In T. Kinnunen & K. Koskinen (Eds.), Translators’ agency (pp. 11-46). Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press.

Achkasov, A. V. (2016). If the mountain won’t come … Translation studies meets localization. Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences, 3 (9), 568-578.

Achkasov, A. V. (2017). Rethinking the scope of localization. Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences, 3 (10), 288-297.

Austermühl, F. (2006). Training translators to localize. Translation technology and its teaching, 69-81.

Bengi-Öner, I. (2006). Yerelleştirme’nin tanımı. Varlık, June 2006, 33-35.

Biau Gil, J. R. (2005). Flying blind: Translation interfaces and non-verbal elements in hypermedia texts (Doctoral dissertation). Institute of Social Sciences, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.

Commissionee. (2017). In Oxford living dictionaries. Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/commissionee

Cronin, M. (2006). Translation and globalization (2nd ed.). London, England-New York, NY: Routledge.

Dunne, K. J. (2006). Putting the cart behind the horse: Rethinking localization quality management. In Author (Ed.), Perspectives on localization (pp. 95-117). Amsterdam, Netherlands-Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Dunne, K. J. (2015). Localization. In C. Sin-wai (Ed.), The Routledge encyclopaedia of translation technology (pp. 550-562). London, England-New York, NY: Routledge.

Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Agency theory: An assessment and review. Academy of management review, 14(1), 57-74.

Fraser, J. (2000). The broader view: how freelance translators define translation competence. In C. Schäffner and B. Adab (Eds.), Developing Translation Competence (pp. 51-62). Amsterdam, Netherlands-Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Gouadec, D. (2007). Translation as a Profession. Amsterdam, Netherlands-Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2009). The effect of translation memory tools in translated web texts: Evidence from a comparative product-based study. Linguistica Antverpiensia 8, 213-232.

Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2013). Translation and web localisation. London, England-New York, NY: Routledge.

Kivistö, J. (2007). Agency theory as a framework for the government-university relationship (Academic dissertation, Tampere University Press, Tampere, Finland). Retrieved from http://tampub.uta.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/67724/978-951-44-6969-5.pdf?sequence=1

Limon, D. (2008). Company websites, genre conventions and the role of the translator. Cultus: The journal of intercultural mediation and communication, 1 (1), 56-69.

Macklovitch, E. & Russell, G. (2000). What’s been forgotten in translation memory. In J.S White (Ed.), Envisioning machine translation in the information future. AMTA 2000. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1934. Berlin-Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.38.4422&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Moghaddam, E. H. (2012). Agency in the Translation and Production of Novels from English in Modern Iran (Doctoral dissertation). Institute of Social Sciences, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.

Munday, J. (2001). Introducing translation studies: Theories and applications. London, England-New York, NY: Routledge.

Nauert, S. (2007). Translating websites. In H. Gerzymisch-Arbogast, & G. Budin (Eds.), Proceedings of the Marie Curie Euroconferences MuTra: LSP translation scenarios - Vienna 30 April – 4 May 2006 MuTra 2007. Retrieved from http://www.euroconferences.info/proceedings/2007_Proceedings/2007_Nauert_Sandra.pdf

O’Hagan, M., & Ashworth, D. (2002). Translation-mediated communication in a digital world: Facing the challenges of globalization and localization, New York: Multilingual Matters.

Pym, A. (2004). The moving text: localization, translation, and distribution. Amsterdam, Netherlands-Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Pym, A. (2010). Exploring translation theories, London, England-New York, NY: Routledge.

Pym, A. (2011). Website localization. The Oxford handbook of translation studies, 410-23. Retrieved from http://usuaris.tinet.cat/apym/on-line/translation/2009_website_localization.pdf

Sandrini, P. (2016). Towards a digital translation policy. In D. Dejica, G. Hansen, P. Sandrini, & I. Para (Eds.), Language in the digital era. Challenges and perspectives. Warsaw / Berlin: De Gruyter Open. 50-59. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/26065725/Towards_a_Digital_Translation_Policy

Schubert, K. (2010). Technical translation, In Y. Gambier, & L. V. Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook of translation studies volume 1 (pp. 350–355). Amsterdam, Netherlands-Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Scott, J. R. (2015). Suggestions for optimizing the agency of freelance legal translators. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2nRK7z7

Vermeer, Hans J., (2004). Skopos and commission in translational action. In L. Venuti (Ed.), The translation studies reader (pp.227-238), Oxon: Routledge.

Yalın, Y. (2005). Teknik çeviri eğitimi kapsamında web sitelerinin yerelleştirilmesi uygulamaları için bir model önerisi (Master’s thesis). Institute of Social Sciences, Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Yıldırım, A., & Şimşek, H. (2011) Sosyal Bilimlerde Nitel Araştırma Yöntemleri (8th ed.)., Istanbul, Turkey: Seçkin.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies
ISSN 1305-578X (Online)
Copyright © 2005-2022 by Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies