Daniel Gile
Most TS
scholars are disciplinary immigrants. Many came from literary studies, others
from the practice of Translation and from Translator Training, some from linguistics,
some from sociology, etc. Many of them have read texts about the natural
sciences and/or behavioural sciences, and some of them now write for the
benefit of the TS community about the underlying principles and methods. While
the knowledge they (we) have acquired is often admirable, understandably, as
second-hand knowledge, it is sometimes less than perfectly reliable and
reflects idealized conceptions rather than reality as it can be experienced in
the field.
One
frequently found misperception is the idea that empirical research projects
need to start with a hypothesis. Hypotheses (in the sense of a specific
relationship between variables or factual expectation etc.) are a very useful
tool in many empirical projects, in particular when testing theories. However,
imposing it as a starting point in any
empirical study would be self-limiting and counter-productive, and as
practicing empirical researchers in most disciplines know, a vast amount of
research is done with research questions and with implicit or explicit
expectations, but not with hypotheses to be tested.
Exploratory research, where the potential
for innovation is high, is almost by definition one which may lead to hypotheses rather than one which
is driven by hypotheses. Most often, a
direction is given to a project by questions such as: “What is the pattern of
movement of a given animal during the summer season?”, “What are the reasons
for a given physical phenomenon?”, “What are the physiological changes which are
associated with a particular behaviour pattern?”, “How do various species interact
in a given ecosystem?”, “What happens when certain environmental conditions
occur?” etc. When, after a while, some information has been collected, it may
be possible to formulate specific theories or hypotheses and then test them,
but such theories and hypotheses are neither fundamental requirements of
empirical research nor its most powerful or
‘scientific’ components. I would even venture to say that in many disciplines,
hypothesis-testing does not even represent a majority of research projects at
any time.
In TS, there is no reason why things should be
fundamentally different and why ‘scientific’ exploration of Translation should
rely exclusively on a single progression paradigm. The hypothesis-oriented
paradigm is just one possibility. The field of Translation is wide and leaves
much room for exploration of different types. I find that young scholars
interested in starting research into Translation should not be told they need a
hypothesis to start empirical research, and telling them that without such a
hypothesis, their work will be ‘less scientific’ does not make sense. Rather,
they should be encouraged to seek a field, theme or phenomenon in Translation
which needs further exploration and to think about how they could contribute
while following the standard conceptual norms of empirical science.