Review
Questions for Jenny Williams & Andrew Chestermans
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?
Whats the difference between Bibliography and References?
In Translation
Studies what standard international formats are used to reference material?
Whats 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?
Whats
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?
Whats
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?
Whats
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.
Whats
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?
Whats
your comment on Cronins 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 Chinas 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 youve 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?
Whats
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?
Whats 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?
Whats
the limit to the length of a 20-minute conference paper?
If you are asked a question which you cant 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?