The rules of the game

Author(s)
Regina Rogl
Abstract

In recent years, translation researchers have paid increasing attention both to the social dynamics within translation communities as well as to how members of these communities view their own translation practices and the normative ideas they formulate for their activities. In this article, I adopt a diachronic perspective by focussing on the processes of construction, negotiation and consolidation of normative ideas on translation and community in an online amateur translation community. Based on a virtual ethnography in a self-organised community of amateur translators, I explore how its members navigate often conflicting ideas of what it means to translate and of what kind of community they want to be. I try to retrace how some ideas meet with resistance while others are agreed upon and eventually established as formalised ‘rules’. Drawing on ‘technography’, a framework from science and technology studies, particular focus is laid on the role of the technology behind the community. In this context, the article shows how the technological design of a community can play a vital part in shaping, consolidating and enforcing the normative views of translation held by amateur translators.

Organisation(s)
Department for Translation Studies
Journal
The Translator
Volume
30
Pages
111-128
No. of pages
18
ISSN
1355-6509
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2023.2272760
Publication date
11-2023
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
602051 Translation studies
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Communication, Language and Linguistics, Linguistics and Language
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/f600704b-c603-4d05-becb-beb8f0e41ca4