Revisiting risk management in online collaborative literary translation: ethical insights from the Chinese context

ABSTRACT

Ethical concerns regarding online collaborative translation have garnered limited but growing attention in the past decade. Previous studies primarily focused on translation products or broader societal perspectives, shedding light on the exploitative nature of online collaborative translation, and its detrimental impact on translation quality and public perception of the translation profession, leaving many process-oriented details underexplored. Recent scholarship has begun to examine the ethical issues that arise from the interactions between translators and translation tools, as well as between actors working in teams. This article seeks to contribute to this growing field of inquiry by specifically investigating collaborative literary translation on the digital platform within the Chinese context. Adopting the method of cognitive ethnography, this article builds on risk management to discuss the various risks facing translators and their coping strategies. Several ethical concerns have emerged, including individual’s irrational acts that may compromise group interests, responsibility evasion inherent in the collaborative work, individual agency challenged by interpersonal risk, and a lack of commitment associated with the act of making concessions.

KEYWORDS:

• Online collaborative translation
• ethics
• risk management
• translation process
• cognitive ethnography

Acknowledgments

We wish to express our heartfelt appreciation to the two anonymous reviewers and the two guest editors for their erudite and insightful feedback. Our gratitude also goes to the collaborative translation team for their robust support in providing the research data. Furthermore, we extend sincere thanks to Prof. Kaisa Koskinen, Dr. Mary Nurminen, Yuchen Liu, Wenhao Yao for their insightful suggestions throughout the process of writing and refining this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. To become a PM, one needs to complete a trial translation. The senior editors of Yeeyan Gutenberg Project then select a candidate from the applicants for the position of PM to oversee the translation project. The project manager’s responsibilities include recruiting team members, coordinating the translation progress and finalising the translation projects.

2. The pseudonym Stella here refers to the lead author of this article who is both the project manager and team member of the collaborative translation project in question.

3. The retrospective verbal protocols and semi-structured interviews were originally undertaken in Chinese and translated into English by the lead author verbatim.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qi Pan

Qi Pan is currently a PhD candidate of Translation Studies at School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University. Her PhD research focuses on online collaborative literary translation in the Chinese context. Her research interests include collaborative translation, literary translation, sociological approaches to translation, and translation process.

Weiqing Xiao

Weiqing Xiao is a professor of Translation Studies and Dean of the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Shanghai International Studies University. She is a former Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (2010-2011). Her research interests include audiovisual translation, translation process, translation technology and T&I teaching. She is also a prolific translator.