Collaboration is evident in all types of translation scenarios and across the whole process of translation, from authors, to publishers, to translation agencies and to translators. Collaboration can occur between translators and any one of these other agents or between two or more translators. Functionalist approaches to translation theory (Nord 1997) emphasize this collaborative nature of the entire translation process. A general definition of collaborative translation, then, is when two or more agents cooperate in some way to produce a translation. Collaborative translation can also have a more narrow meaning, referring to the situation where two or more translators work together to produce one translated product. The term has also come to be closely linked with the concepts of community translation, social translation, volunteer translation, fan translation, fansubbing and crowdsourcing. This close association of concepts is evident in the term “CT³” (pronounced “CT cubed”) which was coined by DePalma and Kelly (2008) to refer to “Community”, “Collaborative technology” and “Crowdsourcing” in the domain of localization. Collaborative translation can occur in many domains including the translation of technical, literary (e.g. Agorni 2005; Rosslyn 2001) and popular genres (e.g. O’Hagan 2009).

References

Agorni, Mirella

2005 “A marginal(ized) perspective on translation history: Women and translation in the Eighteenth century.” Meta 50 (3): 817–830.  TSB

Costanzo, W.V

1972 “The French version of Finnegan’s Wake: Translation, adaptation, recreation.” James Joyce Quarterly 9 (2): 225–236.

DePalma, Donald & Nataly Kelly

2008 Translation of, for, and by the people: How user-translated content projects work in real life. Report produced by Common Sense Advisory.

Díaz Cintas, Jorge & Muñoz Sánchez, Pablo

2006 “Fansubs: Audiovisual translation in an amateur environment.” Journal of Specialised Translation 6: 37–52.  TSB

Ferrier, Ryan

2011 Crowdsourcing the Haiti Relief: one year later. http://​blog​.crowdflower​.com​/2011​/01​/crowdsourcing​-the​-haiti​-relief​-one​-year​-later/ [Accessed: 20 January 2011]

Howe, Jeff

2006 “The rise of crowdsourcing.” Wired 14.06, June.

Nord, Christiane

1997 Translation as a purposeful activity: Functionalist approaches explained. Manchester: St Jerome.

O’Brien, Sharon & Schäler, Reinhard

2010 “Next generation translation and localization: Users are taking charge.” In Proceedings of Translating and the Computer 32. London: Aslib.

O’Hagan, Minako

2009 “Evolution of user-generated translation: Fansubs, translation hacking, and crowdsourcing.” The Journal of Translation and Localisation 1: 94–121.  TSB

Rosslyn, Wendy

2001 “Gender in translation: Lowell and Cixous rewriting Akhmatova.” In Gender and Sexuality in Russian Civilisation, Peter I. Barta (ed.), 71–86. London: Routledge.