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Article published In:
Discourse Analysis in Translation Studies
Edited by Jeremy Munday and Meifang Zhang
[Target 27:3] 2015
► pp. 454–471

Conflicting discourses of translation assessment and the discursive construction of the ‘assessor’ role in cyberspace

 | Ajou University
This article explores the ways in which translation assessment is discursively constructed by readers participating in an online translation debate. Focusing on a controversy over the Korean translation of Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography of Steve Jobs, it examines how readers participating in a translation debate in Daum Agora, the largest online discussion forum in South Korea, enact the ‘assessor’ role in evaluating the translation. Drawing on the concepts of ‘social role,’ ‘activity role,’ and ‘discourse role,’ I argue that online translation assessors perform the discourse roles of ‘expert-judge,’ ‘activist,’ and ‘assessment evaluator.’ The findings suggest that translation assessment in cyberspace is a subjective, contextualizing process where value, meaning, and function are often a matter of uptake. Furthermore, discourse-based approaches may play critical roles in examining translation assessment in cyberspace as a socially situated act that involves an intricate negotiation of meaning, complex workings of power, and a reconstitution of local social positioning within global cultural flows.
Keywords: translation assessment, digital media technology, translation quality, social activism, translation reception
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translation receivers, digital technology, and translation assessment
  • 3.Discourse analysis of the ‘assessor’ role
    • 3.1Data and method
    • 3.2Analysis
      • 3.2.1Judgment of translation quality
      • 3.2.2Conflation of assessment and activism
      • 3.2.3Evaluation of translation assessments
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.27.3.08kan
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