Towards a new methodological approach to social historiography of translation
A social network analysis perspective
In an attempt to appreciate the contribution that social network analysis (SNA) might offer to translation
historiography, two main approaches are presented and discussed in this study: explanatory SNA and exploratory SNA. The former is
more concerned with SNA measures while the latter deals with three potential narratives of social networks. The aim is to employ
SNA in diachronic and synchronic dimensions of literary translation publishing historiography in Iran from 1991 to 2010, a
micro-macro framework that seamlessly integrates agents’ relationships, visualization and network analysis techniques to explore
the impact of ideological-political shifts on the quantity as well as quality of major agents’ relations. Furthermore, the study
attempts to explore how the synergy between Giddens’ Structuration Theory (GST) and SNA can support a deeper and more empirically
grounded understanding of translation historiography. The goal of the study is both methodological and scientific. The results of
SNA graphical outputs suggest that there is a significant relationship between the structure of relationships in fiction
publishing field and the dominant political discourse in Iran.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The agency-structure dilemma in Iranian fiction publishing
- 3.Bringing GST and SNA together
- 3.1SNA: The network of agents’ relationships
- 4.Data collection and analysis
- 5.Results: Iran’s fiction publishing networks
- 5.1Explanatory SNA
- 5.1.1Nodes and edges
- 5.1.2Homophily
- 5.1.3Density
- 5.2Exploratory SNA: Narrations
- 5.2.1The bird’s-eye view narration: Network typology
- 5.2.2The snapshot narration: Sudden changes
- 5.2.3The relational narration: Comparative analysis
- 6.Conclusions: SNA and GST – promising ground for translation historiography
- Acknowledgements
- Note
-
References
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