Lung, Rachel

Repositorio Documental de la Universidad de Valladolid

I am writing this essay with the intention to share my researchexperience with novice researchers in translation studies. Specifically, I wouldlike to take on the issues of solitude and breakthroughs. In the humanities, doingresearch can be a lonely process. Unlike experimental scientific research,humanities disciplines often require us to read, think, and write on our own. It isexactly the individual creative or reflective experience and the researcher’sreceptivity and sensitivity that contribute to the uniqueness of humanisticliterature. I started feeling this sense of academic loneliness in my doctoral studyin England. Although there was a research group in my department, each of usin that group, coming from different countries, did very specialized research. Wecould give each other support, but we were very much on our own in dealingwith occasional depression when none of our peers quite knew what we wereworking on.As a research student, I saw fellow students dropping out or beingterminated for lack of progress. Some of the reasons for these incomplete© Fatiso Herme¯neus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27ISSN: 1139-7489SOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATIONSTUDIES RESEARCHSoledad y avances en la investigación de traducción e interpretaciónRachel LUNGLingnan University, Hong Kong, Chinacandidacies were loneliness, lack of stamina, and loss of direction in study.Another more common and fundamental cause, however, is the issue ofcommunication with supervisors. Doctoral supervisors are often busy people,having been assigned more research students than they could comfortablymanage. It would be wise not to rely too much on your supervisor. He or shemay be your only supervisor, but you are just one of many research students ofyour supervisor. Some students blame their supervisors for their lack ofprogress. The vicious cycle is: the less work you do, the less often you meet yoursupervisor. The longer the lapse between meetings, the more you miss out onobtaining their feedback on the direction of your work. This leads to a spiralingeffect of strained relations with your supervisor, typical of an incompleteresearch candidacy. Learn instead to solve your problems independently andbring forth solutions to share with him or her. Stretch your own capabilities byreading, thinking, consulting, searching, and writing in order to present yourselfpositively as an earnest worker. Supervisors tend to spend more time helpingenthusiastic and proactive students who demonstrate a will to excel. What keptme going was an interest in the subject area and the satisfaction of completingshort-term goals, goals I set for myself weekly. This positive mindset andworking momentum eventually sustained me in getting the doctorate. However,getting the degree hardly guarantees a secure professorial job at a university ora smooth career journey. It is, in most cases, at best a rather modest beginninggiving you the minimum requirement to apply for university teaching andresearch positions. There are many more setbacks and struggles in the academicpathway ahead.While doctoral candidates are usually protected and pampered, full-fledged researchers often face more merciless criticism in conferences. Forinternational conferences in particular, you may be surprised to witness or facevarious styles and strengths of comments coming from academics of othercultures and practices. Yes, you are alone out there on the presentation floor,having to handle a grilling that may be unreasonable or unkind. The audiencemay not agree with the criticisms of your research and presentation. Yet, you feellike the whole world at that moment is ganging up on you. Moments like thesetry your pride and dignity, as well as your emotional maturity. I think the best tactic to deal with such difficult times is to keep smilingwhile taking notes of the comments and questions. It is only natural, however,for your adrenaline to shoot up to such a level that you can hardly tune anythingin. Nevertheless, you should thank the respondent for the comments, before22© Fatiso Herme¯neus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCHaddressing the concerns. Depending on time limitations and your level ofcomposure, you can choose to respond to some rather than all questions orremarks. If you do not have answers for certain questions, say you need sometime to ruminate further and welcome more exchanges during the coffee break.The last thing you want to do is to engage in a confrontation. Whatever theagenda of the stern questioning is, keep an open mind and be receptive tochances for further improvement. On the subject of harsh feedback, I recall an instructive incident Iexperienced almost a decade ago. It was in hindsight a turning-point in myresearch career, which gave me a better appreciation of the niche of focusedresearch. At that time, I wrote a paper on translation and historiography, andnaively felt good about it. I submitted it to a prestigious journal forconsideration. It was quickly rejected three months later with a rather negativeand long referee report. Understandably, I was depressed over this rejection fortwo weeks, after which I reread the detailed report more objectively and openly.I should not have been so harsh on myself. After all, this was my first attemptwith this journal, known to have a high rejection rate. Anyway, I decided toswallow this disgrace and learn from the comments, however critical theysounded. I highlighted key points in the report and put down some notes, as if Iwas analyzing a research article. My article was not entirely worthless, but itsstructure, presentation, and style required a major make-over. I also understandthat these stylistic defects could not be fixed right away. The difficulty is,English is not my native language. Besides, writing for academic publishingrequires more than simply presenting something grammatical. It takes a lot moreto enhance its zest and appeal to an academic audience. I know you might be saying: how about hiring professional Englisheditors to do the job, quick and easy? Not that I am too stingy to pay for editingservices, but I do feel that learning to write and rewrite well is best achievedthrough hands-on experience. It is only through doing it the hard way yourselfthat you can most fruitfully acquire the secrets of good writing and nurture yourown writing style. That summer was solely devoted to improving my writing.This was done by an analytic reading of published books and articles ofestablished authors in Sinology, History, and Translation Studies. I consciouslystudied the structure of their writing and their flow, transition, and coherencestrategies. Since my research focus is on the historical study of interpreting andinterpreters in ancient China, the writing style in History and Sinology wouldindeed better serve my purpose. It was only after that summer’s rigorous stylistic23© Fatiso Herme¯neus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCHlearning that I was once again confident to face and enthusiastically rework therejected piece. With a hopeful and positive mindset, I assiduously revised the article,applying the structural and stylistic devices I learned from superior scholars. Therevision itself took about two months of daily writing, before my resubmission.For better or worse, I had no idea that the same unsympathetic referee would bereading my revised piece. This time around, though, the referee was notunsympathetic. To my delight, it was accepted. It was an emotional moment,knowing that my hard work eventually changed the decision of the same referee.The referee was most emphatic in pointing out that I took his or her initialcritique seriously and addressed my problems in writing. The reviewer waspleased with the revised manuscript and had no hesitance in recommending it tobe published. I have always wanted to know who this referee is; I want tosincerely thank this scholar for giving the most honest and useful report to beginwith, alerting me, although not instantaneously, to my stylistic and writingweaknesses. That negative report, with every good intention, motivated me toenhance my writing, starting from scratch by reading Strunk and White’sElements of Style,1 followed by several other books on technical writing. As I said, that summer was a turning point in my academic career. Theseemingly elementary and regressive step I took to attend to my writinginadequacies in fact brought about encouraging consequences. It sounds strange,but greater awareness given to the structure and style of writing in turn makesthe writing exercise itself more interesting and appealing. I started to findwriting enticing and to enjoy the revision process. After the acceptance thatsummer, I embraced a new vision and had greater confidence in academicwriting, and the quality of my subsequent articles seemed to have taken a leap.There is a major difference if you pay attention to engineering the structure andcoherence of your writing. At least, I now have a good idea what quality researchwriting is like. This renewed understanding likewise elevated my ownexpectations of my writing, thanks to the referee’s initial rejection. Myexperience suggests that this sort of breakthrough in writing is not impossible,even for non-native speakers of English, if you set your mind on taking thechallenge and act on it. The effort and time spent on it definitely pay off in thelong run. 24© Fatiso Herme¯neus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCH1 W. Strunk and E.B. White. Elements of Style. New York: Harcourt, 2000.Being a non-native speaker of English seems to have only a downside ina world of international academic publishing, in which English is the linguafranca. No doubt writing in your second or third language, particularly foracademic publication, is an uphill battle. Yet being a bilingual in fact gives us anadditional way to disseminate our research. This linguistic edge empowers youto publish in your native language in your country or countries in which yourmother tongue is widely used. What comes with this (near) bilingual niche forus, however, is the question: should I write and publish using, apart fromEnglish, my native language? It is of course a matter of personal choice.Speaking for myself, though, I recall that when I first taught translation, mymentors warmly advised me to actively publish in English, not Chinese. Theidea was to attend to the expectation in Hong Kong’s higher education ofinternational research and publications. Considering the hegemony of English ininternational academia, English publications from Western publishers still carrygreater weight than Chinese publications, as far as Hong Kong is concerned. Ifollowed my mentors’ advice and write almost entirely in English. Othermentors, however, held other opinions, saying that if I were to write and publishin Chinese, I could reach a lot more potential readers from mainland China. Infact, both views bear some truth. Yet some others proposed the option of metranslating my published articles into Chinese. Nonetheless, I have been stickingto publishing only in English. My rationale is rather conservative: life is short,and I would like to use my time to work on original research and reachinternational readers. In order to do that, I choose not to invest my time intranslating my output into Chinese. I expect all my publications to be unique andoriginal. There is no right or wrong in this sort of decision. It is a matter of whichoption would better serve your ultimate cause. I did not think about my ultimate cause until much later. During the firstseven years of my career, I wandered across various topics in translation studies,writing on subjects from subtitle translation to note-taking skills for interpreters.I was trying out different subject matters, rather aimlessly stretching myimagination and energy. My earlier publications are diverse and isolatedattempts, with little scope for further expansion. Or should I say that I did notquite grapple with the way to expand a topic? My mind was not modeled ortrained to think about multiple perspectives at the time. Yet the rumination ondifferent possible twists of perspectives, arguments, and alternatives, is anecessary cognitive process in quality research. Recognizing this crucial featureof good research articles, I was motivated to think more critically in the25© Fatiso Herme¯neus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCHconstruction of arguments. Thinking thoroughly does make a difference in thesense that you want to cover all fronts and critique your own writing as apotential reader does. This awareness coincided with an intention to narrowdown my research on the historical study of interpreting in ancient China. Butrealistically, it is the accumulated effect of the above efforts that ultimatelyenhanced my research and writing. Now I would think more thoroughly aboutthe subject of research and conduct a broader literature search. With this scale ofenergy and effort directed to one research topic, it would be difficult to digressor span out too much on what you could practically research on. The problem with working on the history of interpreting is that thesubject itself crisscrosses two disciplines. The legitimate question to ask is: areyou studying interpreting or history? The two disciplines rely on differentmethodologies and ask distinct questions. It is easy to be confused if one is notclear about his or her ultimate subject discipline. I was fortunate, at thebeginning of doing historical studies of translation, to have learned mentorsreminding me of the importance of thinking as a translation studies researcher.In this connection, it is not the immense documentation and endless digging ofhistorical evidence that count. It is the selective use of archival evidence toreflect on what is relevant and pertinent to the study of interpreting or translationthat would really advance translation studies. While immersing myself in the seaof historical materials, I alert myself to the kinds of pertinent questions asked intranslation studies, such as the agents of the translation, aims of the translationor the agenda of the interpreting events, the translation product or interpretingprocess, manipulation and ideology and so on. In this line of thought, history ismeans and translation studies research is the end. One of the appeals of the historical approach to interpreting studies isthat instead of me imposing my views and opinions about cross-linguistic orcross-cultural matters, we have the archival evidence itself ‘speaking’, thusgaining in objectivity and authenticity. Besides, with evidence such as standardhistorical texts, private archival collections, memoirs, letters, paintings, andtravelogues as the basis of analyses and observations, the research writingbecomes far more concrete and substantial. With this wealth of archival sources,different dialogues could be conducted between the researchers and theevidence. It is the constant questioning, conjecturing, validating, and furtherinquiry that sustain the historical approach to interpreting studies. There may bepeers saying that it is a regressive way of approaching interpreting studies, sinceit looks back at what happened in the past, rather than advancing the discipline26© Fatiso Herme¯neus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCHon the technique and efficacy of interpreting. Others would say: why not lethistorians do it? But then historians would mostly not do it; they have morepressing topics to work on, which certainly will not be the marginal disciplinesof interpreting and interpreters in histories. Contrary to the skeptical view,studying the history of interpreting is in fact one way of advancing interpretingstudies. It is only through the original cases of interpreting across differentlanguage cultures, millennia ago, that we are able to identify what interpretingand interpreters were like. Who were those interpreting in the diplomatic orcivilian settings? What were their constraints? How were they identified orrecruited? What was their background of bilingual competence? Could theinterpreting title be inherited? How was this privilege protected? Thedevelopment of interpreting studies without attending to the historical side of thecraft and profession would therefore be a major oversight. The last point I want to make parallels the final stage of a researchproject: presenting your research in conferences. Instead of reiterating the dosand don’ts for conference presentation, which you could probably learn fromother arenas, I want to highlight a more personal aspect of it. The greatest appealof international conferences to me is the chance to meet up with good friends,foreign friends whom you came to know from earlier meetings overseas. Theselike-minded academics with whom you developed personal bonding make thelong-distance traveling worth it. The moral support and rapport they offer me ineach reunion and subsequently via email exchanges are bonuses in my career.This kind of professional friendship entices me to keep going to certainconferences. This short essay captures some of my important changes over the lasttwo decades. I believe most students or researchers in translation studies musthave shared similar experiences, although you may choose to deal with thesituations differently. Anyway, I hope that this essay may somehow serve toinspire you in the trajectory of your research.27© Fatiso Herme¯neus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCH

Solitude and breakthroughs in translation studies research

DIALNET

Rachel LUNG

Directory of Open Access Journals

I am writing this essay with the intention to share my researchexperience with novice researchers in translation studies. Specifically, I wouldlike to take on the issues of solitude and breakthroughs. In the humanities, doingresearch can be a lonely process. Unlike experimental scientific research,humanities disciplines often require us to read, think, and write on our own. It isexactly the individual creative or reflective experience and the researcher’sreceptivity and sensitivity that contribute to the uniqueness of humanisticliterature. I started feeling this sense of academic loneliness in my doctoral studyin England. Although there was a research group in my department, each of usin that group, coming from different countries, did very specialized research. Wecould give each other support, but we were very much on our own in dealingwith occasional depression when none of our peers quite knew what we wereworking on.As a research student, I saw fellow students dropping out or beingterminated for lack of progress. Some of the reasons for these incomplete© Fatiso Hermēneus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27ISSN: 1139-7489SOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATIONSTUDIES RESEARCHSoledad y avances en la investigación de traducción e interpretaciónRachel LUNGLingnan University, Hong Kong, Chinacandidacies were loneliness, lack of stamina, and loss of direction in study.Another more common and fundamental cause, however, is the issue ofcommunication with supervisors. Doctoral supervisors are often busy people,having been assigned more research students than they could comfortablymanage. It would be wise not to rely too much on your supervisor. He or shemay be your only supervisor, but you are just one of many research students ofyour supervisor. Some students blame their supervisors for their lack ofprogress. The vicious cycle is: the less work you do, the less often you meet yoursupervisor. The longer the lapse between meetings, the more you miss out onobtaining their feedback on the direction of your work. This leads to a spiralingeffect of strained relations with your supervisor, typical of an incompleteresearch candidacy. Learn instead to solve your problems independently andbring forth solutions to share with him or her. Stretch your own capabilities byreading, thinking, consulting, searching, and writing in order to present yourselfpositively as an earnest worker. Supervisors tend to spend more time helpingenthusiastic and proactive students who demonstrate a will to excel. What keptme going was an interest in the subject area and the satisfaction of completingshort-term goals, goals I set for myself weekly. This positive mindset andworking momentum eventually sustained me in getting the doctorate. However,getting the degree hardly guarantees a secure professorial job at a university ora smooth career journey. It is, in most cases, at best a rather modest beginninggiving you the minimum requirement to apply for university teaching andresearch positions. There are many more setbacks and struggles in the academicpathway ahead.While doctoral candidates are usually protected and pampered, full-fledged researchers often face more merciless criticism in conferences. Forinternational conferences in particular, you may be surprised to witness or facevarious styles and strengths of comments coming from academics of othercultures and practices. Yes, you are alone out there on the presentation floor,having to handle a grilling that may be unreasonable or unkind. The audiencemay not agree with the criticisms of your research and presentation. Yet, you feellike the whole world at that moment is ganging up on you. Moments like thesetry your pride and dignity, as well as your emotional maturity. I think the best tactic to deal with such difficult times is to keep smilingwhile taking notes of the comments and questions. It is only natural, however,for your adrenaline to shoot up to such a level that you can hardly tune anythingin. Nevertheless, you should thank the respondent for the comments, before22© Fatiso Hermēneus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCHaddressing the concerns. Depending on time limitations and your level ofcomposure, you can choose to respond to some rather than all questions orremarks. If you do not have answers for certain questions, say you need sometime to ruminate further and welcome more exchanges during the coffee break.The last thing you want to do is to engage in a confrontation. Whatever theagenda of the stern questioning is, keep an open mind and be receptive tochances for further improvement. On the subject of harsh feedback, I recall an instructive incident Iexperienced almost a decade ago. It was in hindsight a turning-point in myresearch career, which gave me a better appreciation of the niche of focusedresearch. At that time, I wrote a paper on translation and historiography, andnaively felt good about it. I submitted it to a prestigious journal forconsideration. It was quickly rejected three months later with a rather negativeand long referee report. Understandably, I was depressed over this rejection fortwo weeks, after which I reread the detailed report more objectively and openly.I should not have been so harsh on myself. After all, this was my first attemptwith this journal, known to have a high rejection rate. Anyway, I decided toswallow this disgrace and learn from the comments, however critical theysounded. I highlighted key points in the report and put down some notes, as if Iwas analyzing a research article. My article was not entirely worthless, but itsstructure, presentation, and style required a major make-over. I also understandthat these stylistic defects could not be fixed right away. The difficulty is,English is not my native language. Besides, writing for academic publishingrequires more than simply presenting something grammatical. It takes a lot moreto enhance its zest and appeal to an academic audience. I know you might be saying: how about hiring professional Englisheditors to do the job, quick and easy? Not that I am too stingy to pay for editingservices, but I do feel that learning to write and rewrite well is best achievedthrough hands-on experience. It is only through doing it the hard way yourselfthat you can most fruitfully acquire the secrets of good writing and nurture yourown writing style. That summer was solely devoted to improving my writing.This was done by an analytic reading of published books and articles ofestablished authors in Sinology, History, and Translation Studies. I consciouslystudied the structure of their writing and their flow, transition, and coherencestrategies. Since my research focus is on the historical study of interpreting andinterpreters in ancient China, the writing style in History and Sinology wouldindeed better serve my purpose. It was only after that summer’s rigorous stylistic23© Fatiso Hermēneus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCHlearning that I was once again confident to face and enthusiastically rework therejected piece. With a hopeful and positive mindset, I assiduously revised the article,applying the structural and stylistic devices I learned from superior scholars. Therevision itself took about two months of daily writing, before my resubmission.For better or worse, I had no idea that the same unsympathetic referee would bereading my revised piece. This time around, though, the referee was notunsympathetic. To my delight, it was accepted. It was an emotional moment,knowing that my hard work eventually changed the decision of the same referee.The referee was most emphatic in pointing out that I took his or her initialcritique seriously and addressed my problems in writing. The reviewer waspleased with the revised manuscript and had no hesitance in recommending it tobe published. I have always wanted to know who this referee is; I want tosincerely thank this scholar for giving the most honest and useful report to beginwith, alerting me, although not instantaneously, to my stylistic and writingweaknesses. That negative report, with every good intention, motivated me toenhance my writing, starting from scratch by reading Strunk and White’sElements of Style,1 followed by several other books on technical writing. As I said, that summer was a turning point in my academic career. Theseemingly elementary and regressive step I took to attend to my writinginadequacies in fact brought about encouraging consequences. It sounds strange,but greater awareness given to the structure and style of writing in turn makesthe writing exercise itself more interesting and appealing. I started to findwriting enticing and to enjoy the revision process. After the acceptance thatsummer, I embraced a new vision and had greater confidence in academicwriting, and the quality of my subsequent articles seemed to have taken a leap.There is a major difference if you pay attention to engineering the structure andcoherence of your writing. At least, I now have a good idea what quality researchwriting is like. This renewed understanding likewise elevated my ownexpectations of my writing, thanks to the referee’s initial rejection. Myexperience suggests that this sort of breakthrough in writing is not impossible,even for non-native speakers of English, if you set your mind on taking thechallenge and act on it. The effort and time spent on it definitely pay off in thelong run. 24© Fatiso Hermēneus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCH1 W. Strunk and E.B. White. Elements of Style. New York: Harcourt, 2000.Being a non-native speaker of English seems to have only a downside ina world of international academic publishing, in which English is the linguafranca. No doubt writing in your second or third language, particularly foracademic publication, is an uphill battle. Yet being a bilingual in fact gives us anadditional way to disseminate our research. This linguistic edge empowers youto publish in your native language in your country or countries in which yourmother tongue is widely used. What comes with this (near) bilingual niche forus, however, is the question: should I write and publish using, apart fromEnglish, my native language? It is of course a matter of personal choice.Speaking for myself, though, I recall that when I first taught translation, mymentors warmly advised me to actively publish in English, not Chinese. Theidea was to attend to the expectation in Hong Kong’s higher education ofinternational research and publications. Considering the hegemony of English ininternational academia, English publications from Western publishers still carrygreater weight than Chinese publications, as far as Hong Kong is concerned. Ifollowed my mentors’ advice and write almost entirely in English. Othermentors, however, held other opinions, saying that if I were to write and publishin Chinese, I could reach a lot more potential readers from mainland China. Infact, both views bear some truth. Yet some others proposed the option of metranslating my published articles into Chinese. Nonetheless, I have been stickingto publishing only in English. My rationale is rather conservative: life is short,and I would like to use my time to work on original research and reachinternational readers. In order to do that, I choose not to invest my time intranslating my output into Chinese. I expect all my publications to be unique andoriginal. There is no right or wrong in this sort of decision. It is a matter of whichoption would better serve your ultimate cause. I did not think about my ultimate cause until much later. During the firstseven years of my career, I wandered across various topics in translation studies,writing on subjects from subtitle translation to note-taking skills for interpreters.I was trying out different subject matters, rather aimlessly stretching myimagination and energy. My earlier publications are diverse and isolatedattempts, with little scope for further expansion. Or should I say that I did notquite grapple with the way to expand a topic? My mind was not modeled ortrained to think about multiple perspectives at the time. Yet the rumination ondifferent possible twists of perspectives, arguments, and alternatives, is anecessary cognitive process in quality research. Recognizing this crucial featureof good research articles, I was motivated to think more critically in the25© Fatiso Hermēneus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCHconstruction of arguments. Thinking thoroughly does make a difference in thesense that you want to cover all fronts and critique your own writing as apotential reader does. This awareness coincided with an intention to narrowdown my research on the historical study of interpreting in ancient China. Butrealistically, it is the accumulated effect of the above efforts that ultimatelyenhanced my research and writing. Now I would think more thoroughly aboutthe subject of research and conduct a broader literature search. With this scale ofenergy and effort directed to one research topic, it would be difficult to digressor span out too much on what you could practically research on. The problem with working on the history of interpreting is that thesubject itself crisscrosses two disciplines. The legitimate question to ask is: areyou studying interpreting or history? The two disciplines rely on differentmethodologies and ask distinct questions. It is easy to be confused if one is notclear about his or her ultimate subject discipline. I was fortunate, at thebeginning of doing historical studies of translation, to have learned mentorsreminding me of the importance of thinking as a translation studies researcher.In this connection, it is not the immense documentation and endless digging ofhistorical evidence that count. It is the selective use of archival evidence toreflect on what is relevant and pertinent to the study of interpreting or translationthat would really advance translation studies. While immersing myself in the seaof historical materials, I alert myself to the kinds of pertinent questions asked intranslation studies, such as the agents of the translation, aims of the translationor the agenda of the interpreting events, the translation product or interpretingprocess, manipulation and ideology and so on. In this line of thought, history ismeans and translation studies research is the end. One of the appeals of the historical approach to interpreting studies isthat instead of me imposing my views and opinions about cross-linguistic orcross-cultural matters, we have the archival evidence itself ‘speaking’, thusgaining in objectivity and authenticity. Besides, with evidence such as standardhistorical texts, private archival collections, memoirs, letters, paintings, andtravelogues as the basis of analyses and observations, the research writingbecomes far more concrete and substantial. With this wealth of archival sources,different dialogues could be conducted between the researchers and theevidence. It is the constant questioning, conjecturing, validating, and furtherinquiry that sustain the historical approach to interpreting studies. There may bepeers saying that it is a regressive way of approaching interpreting studies, sinceit looks back at what happened in the past, rather than advancing the discipline26© Fatiso Hermēneus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCHon the technique and efficacy of interpreting. Others would say: why not lethistorians do it? But then historians would mostly not do it; they have morepressing topics to work on, which certainly will not be the marginal disciplinesof interpreting and interpreters in histories. Contrary to the skeptical view,studying the history of interpreting is in fact one way of advancing interpretingstudies. It is only through the original cases of interpreting across differentlanguage cultures, millennia ago, that we are able to identify what interpretingand interpreters were like. Who were those interpreting in the diplomatic orcivilian settings? What were their constraints? How were they identified orrecruited? What was their background of bilingual competence? Could theinterpreting title be inherited? How was this privilege protected? Thedevelopment of interpreting studies without attending to the historical side of thecraft and profession would therefore be a major oversight. The last point I want to make parallels the final stage of a researchproject: presenting your research in conferences. Instead of reiterating the dosand don’ts for conference presentation, which you could probably learn fromother arenas, I want to highlight a more personal aspect of it. The greatest appealof international conferences to me is the chance to meet up with good friends,foreign friends whom you came to know from earlier meetings overseas. Theselike-minded academics with whom you developed personal bonding make thelong-distance traveling worth it. The moral support and rapport they offer me ineach reunion and subsequently via email exchanges are bonuses in my career.This kind of professional friendship entices me to keep going to certainconferences. This short essay captures some of my important changes over the lasttwo decades. I believe most students or researchers in translation studies musthave shared similar experiences, although you may choose to deal with thesituations differently. Anyway, I hope that this essay may somehow serve toinspire you in the trajectory of your research.27© Fatiso Hermēneus, TI, 17, pp. 21-27RACHEL LUNGSOLITUDE AND BREAKTHROUGHS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCH

Solitude and breakthroughs in translation studies research

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