Review Questions for Jenny
Williams & Andrew Chesterman’s The Map (2002)
(These questions accumulated over more
than one semester in my interaction with the second-year graduate students in the
Research Design and Progress seminar. The students have been put through most
of the questions listed here to see how well they have understood what they
read and what intellectual efforts they have made to apply what they read to
their own thesis research. The questions marked with red are relatively more
important and need more synthetic thinking on the part of the readers.)
Chapter 1 Areas in Translation Research. 1
Chapter 2 From the
Initial Idea to the Plan. 1
Chapter 3 Theoretical
Models of Translation. 1
Chapter 4 Kinds of
Research. 1
Chapter 5 Questions,
Claims, Hypotheses. 1
Chapter 6 Relations
between Variables. 1
Chapter 7 Selecting
and Analyzing Data. 1
Chapter 8 Writing Your
Research Report 1
Chapter 9 Presenting
Your Research Orally. 1
Chapter 10 Assessing
Your Research. 1
What areas of study
can you identify in translation research? Among these, which one or ones do you
have a special interest in, and why?
What can you do to
refine your initial idea about your thesis research?
At the beginning of a research
project we usually read a key text in the field intensively in order to be initiated into
the basic things in this field. Since you have developed some preliminary
interest in one or two areas of translation research, what key text in the
field(s) have you found that can initiate you into
the field(s)?
Why do you need to
make notes on things you read in your own words?
When should you begin to organize
your notes according to themes?
As you read, what
questions may you raise in a critical spirit?
What are primary,
secondary, and tertiary sources? What are the merits and problems of tertiary
sources? Where should you find your empirical evidence?
Why must you keep meticulous
bibliographic records from the very beginning of your research?
What’s the
difference between Bibliography and References?
In Translation
Studies what standard international formats are used to reference material? What’s
the difference between the APA System and the Harvard System?
Why is the “Translation with Commentary” (“Annotated
Translation”) dissertation model so popular on BA and taught Masters programmes in
Translation Studies in Western countries?
On the side of
Information Technology Planning, what can you do to facilitate the word
processing of the drafts and final version of your thesis?
What should your
research plan include?
What is a
theoretical model? How is it different from an ordinary model? How can it help
you in your study?
What are the three
basic types of model of translation?
What’s the difference
between correspondence and equivalence?
How is
the comparative model used in corpus studies?
When do you use process
models?
How are causal models
different from comparative/product models and process models?
What’s the difference
between causes and influences?
What are
the three levels or dimensions of causation relevant to translation as a
product?
What are
the two levels of causation relevant to the effects of translation?
List and briefly explain four
or five concepts or approaches in contemporary Translation Studies that are
based on a causal model of translation.
List some questions to
be answered by a causal model-based translation study.
What kind
of theoretical model do you use in your thesis?
What’s the difference
between conceptual (theoretical) and empirical research? On what criterion is
the distinction made?
When Salman Rushdie says
“Description is itself a political act”, what does he mean? How do you comment
on Holmes’ distinction between the theoretical and descriptive branches of
Translation Studies?
What processes are
involved in conceptual analysis?
What
characteristics does empirical research feature?
On the
criterion of whether the researcher interferes with the natural order of
things, what subtypes can empirical research be classified into?
On the
criterion of the research goal (possibility or generality), what subtypes does
empirical research fall into?
What are exploratory
studies? What result do they turn out?
Why and how do
researchers interfere with the natural order in experimental studies?
Why do many research projects
involve both qualitative and quantitative research? In what order are these two
kinds of research typically arranged in such a project?
Give some examples of
methods frequently used in empirical research.
When do we use case studies? What
are the limitations of case studies?
What have recent corpus-based Translation
Studies been focused on? What might corpus study help in your thesis research?
When
do we use a survey study? What are historical and archival researches?
Give some examples of
applied research in Translation Studies.
What’s the relationship
between questions, claims, and hypotheses?
One reason for reading the
relevant literature is to discover good questions. Research questions may be definition questions or basic
data
questions. What kind(s) of research question do you
ask in your thesis proposal? And what methods will be involved to find out
answers to them? {Be specific in your answer: do you propose to conduct
conceptual research, empirical research, or applied research? If you opt for
empirical research, what specific kind(s) of
empirical research (naturalistic, experimental, qualitative, quantitative?)
will you do and what specific empirical research method(s)
(case study, corpus study, survey, historical/archival study) will you use?}
What is a
claim? What does it mean to your field? By what should it be supported? What
would your work sound like if you do not have a claim?
When should
you state your basic research Q(s) and main claim(s) in your thesis?
What is a hypothesis? How many
kinds of hypothesis are there? Why are hypotheses important in research?
Must you propose your
hypothesis by yourself?
What is
interpretive hypothesis? Give some typical forms of interpretive hypotheses.
Interpretive hypotheses
are fundamental to conceptual research; are they fundamental to empirical
research as well?
What’s your comment on
Cronin’s hypothesis that translators are nomads?
Williams and Chesterman point
out (2002) that one weakness of the field of Translation Studies is the
discrepancy between the huge amount of research that has gone into developing
and refining conceptual tools by means of interpretive hypotheses, and the much
smaller amount of research that has gone into applying these tools to real
problems. Make comments on this view with special reference to the status quo
of China’s Translation Studies.
What is a descriptive hypothesis? What is a
restricted descriptive hypothesis and what is an unrestricted descriptive
hypothesis (give examples)? What are descriptive hypotheses usually formulated
as in humanities?
What is an explanatory
hypothesis and what is a predictive hypothesis? Do these two share anything at
all? How are they different from each other?
Eg.: Are traditional prescriptive statements such as “Original
metaphors should be preserved in literary translation” explanatory or
predictive hypotheses?
Explain
what kind(s) of hypothesis you will provide in
response to the research Q(s) you identified in your
thesis study.
What does “justifying a
hypothesis” mean? How can we justify a hypothesis?
What
distinguishes scientific study from other ways of searching for knowledge?
What is
operationalizing? Why is operationalizing important in testing a hypothesis?
How will you operationalize your hypothesis in your thesis study?
What are
the strong and the weak requirements for an empirical hypothesis?
From the point of view
of hypothesis testing, what is speculation?
Interpretive hypotheses
cannot be falsified, can we test them? If so, how to do it?
Illustrate
the testable consequences of an interpretive hypothesis with examples.
What are
the ACID tests?
Can we say
a hypothesis is “true”?
Is
hypothesis-testing related to the scope of a claim in any way?
What may cause a
hypothesis not to be supported in testing?
Does a
varsity speech contest resemble a research project in any way?
Chapter 6 Relations between Variables
The authors give a broad, non-technical
definition and a focused, technical definition of variable. What are they? Why
do we call aspects of reality that we are trying to
connect “variables”?.
What do we mean when we
say a variable is a two-value one or one like
a scale?
What are the
three kinds of relations? How are they arranged in this part of the book?
In
Translation Studies, What is a text variable?
How should we understand the
concept of “context” as used in the term “context variable”? There is a list of major context
variables in Translation Studies on pp. 85-86: read them again. What of these
do you have a special interest in?
What are the two ways of studying the
relations between text and context variables?
To sum up, what do we
look for in studying relations between variables?
Tell us
something about the variables you’ve identified in your thesis research and
what patterns or regularities you are looking for in the end.
What
categories do empirical data used in Translation Studies fall into? Illustrate
textual and contextual data with examples from Translation Studies.
What is research on
best practice?
What is meta-analysis study? Give an example of
meta-analysis. Why is literature review important in scientific studies?
If you need to establish a
bank of comparable non-translated texts for your thesis study, how would you do
it?
What does
the word “generalize” mean in research? To generalize from your results, what
qualities must your data have?
In what way should you
choose your data in order to test the validity of a general hypothesis?
If the
test has been carried out reliably but the test results turn out to be
negative, what possible interpretations might exist for that?
Why need most
conclusions be qualified and made relative?
What cognitive
processes are involved in categorization?
What’s the difference
between classical (Aristotelian) categories and natural categories?
What is a
classification?
Do categories and classification
need to be justified and tested? If so, what is the reason?
What is
random sampling? Why is it important in research?
In most
cases we will be using the mean to represent the
most typical value in our data, but what is the advantage of the median in
comparison to the mean and in what situation is the mode useful?
What is
variance? What does standard deviation signify?
What
should be done in reviewing literature? Tell us sth about your way of doing
literature review.
What sources should you document when you
write a research paper or thesis?
Can you give your
references (i.e. document your sources) in a separate sentence? If you can,
what should you note when doing so?
Is there any difference
between the use of “see” and the use “cf.” when giving a reference within
brackets?
How do you refer to a source via a different source?
When should you quote
and when to paraphrase?
What does
“KISS” mean in this volume, “keep it simple, (you) stupid”?
Readers like to know where you are taking
them to, so what should you do to tell your readers their destination?
According to the authors, one
thing that you need to do to remind your readers of their destination is to use
enough metatext. What does “metatext”
mean in this context? In your draft MA thesis, what metatext
have you used to link passages at the ends and beginnings of the Introduction,
Literature Review, and Methodology chapters?
What does “reinvent the wheel”
mean in research? How will your readers react if you do no more than reinvent
the wheel? What have you done to avoid “reinventing the wheel” in your thesis
study?
Why do readers appreciate clarity? In what
respects should clarity be sought? When you write in English, what should you
do to ensure clarity?
What is
the Old-Before-New principle? Why do we need to follow this principle in
writing a sentence or a paragraph?
In your judgment, what
do your readers expect your thesis to be like?
You must make your readers
trust your claims. How can you do that? What academic sins can you commit that
may cause your readers not to trust you or your claims?
What’s
the typical logical structure of an empirical research report (thesis)?
What might you do when
you get stuck in your writing?
What do we mean when we
say that a claim or argument must be substantiated?
What is a
warrant? What can it usefully be paraphrased as?
What claims may be
regarded as important?
What does
“qualifying a claim” mean? What is hedging?
How can you protect yourself
against objections your readers will probably raise to your claims?
The
introductory chapter of your thesis will be one of the
first things the reader looks at. What should you include in
this chapter?
In what
sense is the concluding chapter a mirror image of the
introductory chapter of your thesis? What typical rhetorical moves does it consist of?
From what points of
view should you check and revise your text during the
final stages?
What should you consider
when preparing a presentation?
What is
the Golden Rule of making oral presentations?
How does
an oral presentation differ from an essay or other written piece of work? And
what should you do to help your audience to follow you easily?
How should a presentation
be structured?
What should you note when delivering your
presentation? If you have to read your script, what may you do to reduce the
mental weariness it may bring to your audience?
How can visual aids
help to enhance an oral presentation?
What’s the limit to the
length of a 20-minute conference paper?
If you
are asked a question which you can’t answer, what should you do? If you are
asked a particularly hostile question, what should you do?
Chapter
10 Assessing Your Research
What should you check
with when you make a self-assessment of your thesis with
respect to its methodology?
How can your readers be
convinced by what you are telling them?
Against the list provided by
Williams and Chesterman of the typical weaknesses that occur in academic texts
with regard to length, organization, review of the
literature, methodology, logic, style, added value, and plagiarism, what
weaknesses or mistake did you find in your draft thesis and what will you do to
overcome them?