Cover not available
Article published In:
Translation in Society
Vol. 2:2 (2023) ► pp.213–234

Peripheral vision and challenging invisibilities

Theoretical and methodological reflections on the “digitized turn” and “born-digital” sources in archives of translation and translators

ORCID logo | London Metropolitan University
This article presents a discussion of the theoretical and methodological challenges posed by digitization processes and born-digital sources within translation and translator studies research, particularly in archival contexts. It begins by demonstrating how the digitization of archives and source materials remains an undertheorized issue in translation contexts, as well as the need to understand how digitization allows new forms of “peripheral vision” across our research and publication processes. Subsequently, the article problematizes the archiving and use of born-digital sources to research translation and translators, particularly in terms of issues surrounding data collection, access and ethics. In doing so, this article argues that care must be taken to properly understand and preserve the digital sources that will enable archival research in the future, whilst emphasizing the new opportunities presented by digitized and born-digital sources to challenge the invisibility of translation and translators within many of the world’s archives and histories.
Keywords: translator archives, translation history, digitization, digital turn, translator studies, social history, digital sources, archival research, research ethics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Peripheral vision and the challenges of the “digitized turn” in existing archives
  • 3.Challenging invisibilities with new archives of the born-digital
    • 3.1Born-digital archives of translation
    • 3.2Born-digital archives of translators
  • 4.A digital future for archives of translation and translators?
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.23008.fre
References (63)
References
Akashi, Motoko. 2018. Contesting Invisibility: Japanese Celebrity Translators and the Impact of their Fame. PhD diss. University of East Anglia.
Atefmehr, Zahra, and Farzaneh Farahzad. 2022. “Microhistorical Research in Translator Studies: An Archival Methodology.” The Translator 28 (3): 251–262. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bardet, Mary. 2021. “Literary Detection in the Archives: Revealing Jeanne Heywood (1856–1909).” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 41–54. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ben-Ari, Nitsa. 2021. “The Translator’s Note Revisited.” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 157–182. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
boyd, danah, and Kate Crawford. 2012. “Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for A Cultural, Technological, and Scholarly Phenomenon.” Information, Communication and Society 15 (5): 662–679. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew. 2009. “The Name and Nature of Translator Studies.” Hermes 421. [URL]
Claus, Peter, and John Marriott, eds. 2012. History: An Introduction to Theory, Method and Practice. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar
Constanza Guzmán, María. 2020. “(Re)Visiting the Translator’s Archive: Toward a Genealogy of Translation in the Americas.” Palimpsestes: Revue de traduction 341: 45–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cordingley, Anthony, and Patrick Hersant. 2021. “Translation Archives: An Introduction.” Meta 66 (1): 9–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dam, Helle V., and Karen Korning Zethsen. 2012. “Translators in International Organizations: A Special Breed of High-status Professionals? Danish EU Translators as A Case in Point.” Translation and Interpreting Studies 7 (2): 211–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delisle, Jean, and Judith Woodsworth. 2012. “Introduction.” In Translators Through History, edited by Jean Delisle, and Judith Woodsworth, xiii–xxv. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Desjardins, Renée. 2017. Translation and Social Media: In Theory, in Training and in Professional Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Feltrin-Morris, Marella. 2018. “Welcome Intrusions: Capturing the Unexpected in Translators’ Prefaces to Dante’s Divine Comedy.” Tusaaji: A Translation Review 6 (1): 1–10. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fornalczyk-Lipska, Anna. 2021. “Translators of Children’s Literature and Their Voice in Prefaces and Interviews.” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 183–198. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt. 2000. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Galleti, Chiara. 2013. “Four-Handed Performances in Children’s Literature: Translation and Adaptation in the Italian and English Editions of Tove Jansson’s Picture Books.” In Authorial and Editorial Voices in Translation 1 – Collaborative Relationships between Authors, Translators, and Performers, edited by Hanne Jansen, and Anna Wegener, 143–164. Montréal: Éditions québécoises de l’oeuvre.Google Scholar
Garde-Hansen, Joanne. 2009. “MyMemories? Personal Digital Archive Fever and Facebook.” In Save As… Digital Memories, edited by Joanne Garde-Hansen, Andrew Hoskins, and Anna Reading, 135–150. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1976. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-century Miller. Translated by John Tedeschi, and Anne C. Tedeschi. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gold, Nicolas. 2020. Using Twitter Data in Research: Guidance for Researchers and Ethics Reviewers. Accessed 28 March 2023. [URL]
Grigg, Susan. 1991. “Archival Practice and the Foundations of Historical Method.” The Journal of American History 78 (1): 228–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hajek, Andrea. 2012. Facebook and the Digital (R)evolution of a Protest Generation. Accessed 28 March 2023. [URL]
Hitchcock, Tim. 2015. Voices of Authority: Towards a History from below in Patchwork. Accessed 20 March 2023. [URL]
Holmes, James. 2004. “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies.” In The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 180–192. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hu, Gengshen. 2004. “Translator-Centredness.” Perspectives 12 (2): 106–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaillant, Lise. 2022. “How Can We Make Born-digital and Digitised Archives More Accessible? Identifying Obstacles and Solutions.” Archival Science 221: 417–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobsen, Arnt Lykke. 2017. “Translation Process Research.” In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition, edited by John W. Schweiter, and Aline Ferreira: 19–49. Hoboken, NJ and Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Hanne. 2017. “Unraveling Multiple Translatorship through An E-mail Correspondence: Who Is Having A Say?” In Textual and Contextual Voices of Translation, edited by Cecilia Alvstad, Annjo K. Greenall, Hanne Jansen, and Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov, 133–157. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaindl, Klaus, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, eds. 2021. Literary Translator Studies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kassouf, Ana Lúcia, and Lucas Ronconi. 2022. “Obstacles that Southern Researchers Face in Publishing in Economics Journals, and Why the Research Community Should Care.” Partnership for Economic Policy Working Papers Series: 2022–23. [URL]
Kilian, Jörg. 2010. “T@stentöne. Geschriebene Umgangssprache in computervermittelter Kommunikation. Historisch-kritsche Ergänzungen zu einem neuen Feld der linguistischen Forschung.” In Deutsche Gegenwartssprache: Globalisierung, Neue Medien, Sprachkritik, edited by Iris Forster, and Tobias Heinz, 63–96. Stuttgart: Reclam.Google Scholar
King, Michelle T. 2012. “Working with/in the Archives.” In Research Methods for History, edited by Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire, 13–29. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Kolb, Waltraud. 2021. “‘Hemingway’s priorities were just different’: Self-concepts of literary translators.” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 107–122. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koskinen, Kaisa. 2008. Translation Institutions: An Ethnographic Study of EU Translation. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Laite, Julia. 2020. “The Emmet’s Inch: Small History in a Digital Age.” Journal of Social History 53 (4): 963–989. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambert, Joseph. 2023. Translation Ethics. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levi, Giovanni. 1992. “On Microhistory.” In New Perspectives on Historical Writing, edited by Peter Burke, 97–119. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Microhistory and the Recovery of Complexity.” In Historical Knowledge: In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence, edited by Susanna Fellman and Marjatta Rahikainen, 121–132. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
López, Belén Santana, and Críspulo Travieso Rodríguez. 2021. “Staging the Literary Translator in Bibliographic Catalogs.” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 89–104. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Magnússon, Sigurður Gylfi, and István M. Szijártó. 2013. What Is Microhistory? Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Magnússon, Sigurður Gylfi. 2006. “Social History – Cultural History – Alltagsgeschichte – Microhistory: In-Between Methodologies and Conceptual Frameworks.” Journal of Microhistory. [URL]
Meylaerts, Reine. 2013. “The Multiple Lives of Translators.” TTR: traduction, terminologie, redaction 26 (2): 103–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moorkens, Joss, and David Lewis. 2019. “Copyright and the Reuse of Translation as Data.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology, edited by Minako O’Hagan, 469–481. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Munday, Jeremy. 2014. “Using Primary Sources to Produce A Microhistory of Translation and Translators: Theoretical and Methodological Concerns.” The Translator 20 (1): 64–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1992. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Lara. 2016. “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast.” The American Historical Review 121 (2): 377–402. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pym, Anthony. 1998. Method in Translation History. Manchester: St Jerome.Google Scholar
. 2009. “Humanizing Translation History.” HERMES – Journal of Language and Communication in Business 22 (42): 23–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raspin, Angela. 1996. “Private Papers.” In The Contemporary History Handbook, edited by Brian Brivati, Julia Buxton, and Anthony Seldon, 219–229. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Romein, C. Annemieke, Max Kemman, James Baker, Michel De Gruijter, Albert Meroño-Peñuela, Thorsten Ries, Ruben Ros, and Stefania Scagliola. 2020. “State of the Field: Digital History.” History: The Journal of the Historical Association 105 (365): 291–312. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roser, Max, Hannah Ritchie, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina. 2020. Internet. Accessed 20 March 2023. [URL]
Schlager, Daniela. 2021. “Translators’ Multipositionality, Teloi and Goals: The Case of Harriet Martineau.” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 199–214. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sharpe, Jim. 1991. “History from Below.” In New Perspectives on Historical Writing, edited by Peter Burke, 25–42. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Stock, Mechtild. 2016. “Facebook: A Source for Microhistory?” In Facets of Facebook: Use and Users, edited by Kathrin Knautz, and Katsiaryna S. Baran, 210–240. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strowe, Anna. 2021. “Archive, Narrative, and Loss.” Meta 66 (1): 178–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tachtiris, Corine, and Priscilla Layne. 2023. “Special Focus Introduction: Centering Black Cultural Production in Translation.” Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature 47 (1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Townsend, Leanne, and Claire Wallace. 2016. Social Media Research: A Guide to Ethics. Accessed 28 March 2023. [URL]
Turkel, William. 2006. Methodology for the Infinite Archive. Accessed 20 March 2023. [URL]
Vanacker, Beatrijs. 2021. “Mediating the Female Transla(u)t(h)orial Posture: Elisabeth Wolff-Bekker.” In Literary Translator Studies, edited by Klaus Kaindl, Waltraud Kolb, and Daniela Schlager, 215–232. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995/2008/2018. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wakabayashi, Judy. 2019. “Digital Approaches to Translation History.” Translation and Interpreting 11 (2). [URL]
Walker, Callum. 2022. Translation Project Management. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williams, Caroline. 2008. “Personal Papers: Perceptions and Practices.” In What are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader, edited by Louise Craven, 53–70. Aldershot & Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.