Volunteer Subtitle Translators Website as an Example of a Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education

Abstract

This descriptive study reflects an interrelation between online volunteer subtitle organizations and a social constructivist approach from a pedagogical point of view in translation training. The triggering fact of the study is the hypothesis that technology-enabled online volunteer translators’ communities stand as an example of a social constructivist approach to translator training in a virtual context. Through an analysis of the forum section of the website along with the translation projects done collaboratively by volunteer translators, the similar characteristics of both the online platform and a Social Constructivist Approach in translator training by Kiraly are withdrawn. In this way, the aim is to detect if volunteer translator organizations can be an example of a Social Constructivist Approach to translator training in subtitle translation. The corpus of the study includes an online volunteer translators’ website named www.turkcealtyazi.org. The empirical data collected is based on the analysis of intentionally selected samples from the website and items of good subtitling practice drawn from the forum section of the website in the framework of the social constructivist approach. Upon the analysis, the obtained data is compared with the model of the social constructivist approach in translator education to discover the similarities in terms of the relations between members, the process of subtitling, the distribution of tasks, etc. It is expected that this data will map how the online volunteer organization is similar to a social constructivist model in translator training.