Examining English–Arabic freelance translators’ practices as social actors in ProZ.com: a translation sociological approach based on Bourdieu’s categorisations of Capital and Wenger’s community of practice

Alqhtani, Y. (2025) Examining English–Arabic freelance translators’ practices as social actors in ProZ.com: a translation sociological approach based on Bourdieu’s categorisations of Capital and Wenger’s community of practice. PhD thesis, University of Reading. doi: 10.48683/1926.00127467

Abstract/Summary

The online freelance translation marketplace is a valuable environment for the application of sociological theories to expand the sociological turn in Translation Studies and create more points of connection between the two fields of sociology and Translation Studies. This thesis investigates the practices of English–Arabic freelance translators as social actors in the online freelance translation marketplace, focusing on the largest translator platform: ProZ.com. It takes a novel sociological approach by integrating Bourdieu’s categorisations of capital and Wenger’s community of practice (CoP) theory into its theoretical framework and employing two analytical approaches, namely multimodal discourse-analysis and digital conversation analysis. Bourdieu’s categorisations of capital are applied to explore how the translators signal their capital to prospective clients. This thesis addresses two research questions: (1) what types of capital do English–Arabic freelance translators present in their profiles on ProZ.com? (2) How do English–Arabic freelance translators multimodally signal their capital, using the tools provided by ProZ.com, to capture the attention of clients and boost the salience of their capital? To answer these questions, two analytical approaches from multimodal discourse-analysis are applied to analyse the translators’ profiles: visual grammar, as proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), and typography grammar, as outlined by Stöckl (2005). Wenger’s CoP theory is employed to examine the patterns of interactions employed by the translators to build their CoP in two forums on the platform: KudoZ and the Arabic-language forum. This addresses two further questions: (3) how and in what instances do English–Arabic freelance translators use ProZ.com’s tools to solve problems collaboratively? (4) How do English–Arabic freelance translators build and maintain their CoP in ProZ.com? The two apparatuses of digital conversation analysis – the sequence organisation model by Schegloff (2007b) and membership categorisation analysis (MCA) by Schegloff (2007a) – are applied to analyse the translators’ conversations and explore how they create and maintain their CoP. The findings show that most of the 210 translators in the study have not made substantial use of ProZ.com’s tools, and the issue of information asymmetry is not mitigated, despite ProZ.com’s internal signalling system proving efficient. This thesis proposes the development of marketing courses for translation students and trainees to build a professional persona in this competitive marketplace. It shows that English–Arabic freelance translators collaboratively create and maintain their CoP, making their shared repertoire a valuable source of information. This content could be used to generate courses for translation students and trainees, leveraging the contributors’ substantial experience. This shared repertoire would also be valuable for translation technology developers looking to enhance their products.

Item Type	Thesis (PhD)
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/127467
Identification Number/DOI	10.48683/1926.00127467
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > Languages and Cultures
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