A Study Of A Collaborative Translation Project Within The Framework Of Actor-Network Theory

With the development of collaborative translation,more and more researches are focused on this field.Through the analysis of the collaborative translation studies over the past ten years,the author finds out that the researchers mainly study the collaborative translation models and the Internet-based technologies,but pay less attention to the various actors and their interaction in the collaborative translation projects.Translation is a social practice,which may involve varied actors in every link.The successful operation of a translation project is the joint efforts of all actors.Actor-network theory(ANT)focuses on different actors and their relations in social practice.Through constructing the actor-network,the researchers can obtain a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding about the society.The author utilizes ANT to analyze a collaborative translation project in publication from both macro and micro-level perspectives.From macro-level perspective,the author identifies the actors involved in the project and the relations among them,constructs the actor-network,and analyzes the actors'positions in the network and their impact on the whole publication project.From micro-level perspective,the author analyzes the concrete interaction within the translators group,such as discussing the terms and reviewing in pairs,as well as the strategies applied to the translation and revision,such as simplification,replacement,supplementary,and rearrangement of words order,and explains their impact on other actors and the actor-network.The author hopes that this study will enrich the study of collaborative translation and translation studies from a sociological perspective.