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Why do you translate? Motivation to volunteer and TED translation
Olohan, Maeve
Translation Studies. 2014;7(1):17-33.
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Abstract
Many organizations today mobilize vast volunteer translation efforts, but there islittle research into how the volunteering of translation may be understood insociological and psychological terms. This paper introduces translation scholarsto some of the complexities of investigating volunteering and motivation,informed by research from sociology, behavioural economics and socialpsychology. It then makes a methodological contribution to the study ofvolunteer translation motivation by assessing the potential of qualitative analysisof translators’ discourse to derive conceptually sound categories of motivation.This methodology is tested on a small set of statements from volunteer translators for TED. The test case prepares the ground for much-needed, larger-scale studies into volunteer translation motivations. The paper concludes by advocating amixed-methods approach which can accommodate multidimensional perspectivesand contexts of volunteering.
Keyword(s)
TED Open Translation Project; Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI); altruism; crowdsourced translation; mixed-methods research; volunteer translation