1. All the eight translators willing to take part in the research qualify as professional and experienced translators since at the time of the research they had been doing translation assignments for a period ranging between 9 and 16 years. The eight translators were selected in a way that they support the two major Hungarian political parties, the left wing MSZP and the right wing Fidesz. This gave a group of five translators supporting MSZP and three translators supporting Fidesz. Finally, taking account of political orientation, on the one hand, and, bearing in mind professional considerations – based on the evaluative feedback provided by Intercontact Budapest Kft. and on the basis of former assessments by the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office –, on the other hand, the most professional four translators were selected. Out of these four translators, two support MSZP and two support Fidesz.

2. All the four translators finally selected regularly translate political texts for the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office. These assignments include minutes, action plan programmes, development plans, application documents, tender documents, speeches, analyses, diverse reports as well as political and newspaper articles. As the selected translators produce texts that qualify (both for the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office and for Intercontact Budapest Kft.) as professional, superb quality translations, there is no reason to be concerned that the translators in question would have difficulty translating the source newspaper articles used in the scope of this research.

3. One aim in the selection of participants was to find translators who could work on the translations at home independently. All of the translators agreed to work at home and on their own when producing the target texts for this research. In order to verify that translators really did the translations independently, on the suggestion of one of the would-be participants, it was agreed that translators would work using webcameras. The researcher was informed when the participants would start working on the translations and was able to monitor them. This way it could be ensured and verified that translators worked independently.

4. Another aim was to find those two translators out of the four selected who are politically more committed and active and who support the two major Hungarian political parties, the left wing Socialist Party and the right wing Fidesz, respectively. Out of the two Socialist Party supporters the one selected had a longer history of voting for the Socialist Party than the other (since 1989 as opposed to 2002), which her family background also confirms (her father used to be a diplomat before 1989). In this light, it was supposed that the selected Socialist Party supporter translator would show even greater political commitment, which can possibly result in more extensive bias and reproduction of ideology in the target texts and more research data to analyse. Similarly, out of the two Fidesz supporters the one selected showed more political activity: one of the Fidesz supporters was a regular Fidesz voter and the other person actively worked as a political activist in campaigns. Thus, it was supposed that the second Fidesz supporter would show greater political commitment, which can possibly result in more extensive bias and reproduction of ideology in the target texts and consequently more research data to analyse. This way the two participants were finally selected: a Socialist supporter and a Fidesz supporter translator.

Neither of the translators finally selected wished to be named in the research for personal and political reasons. To ensure their anonymity, they will be referred to as Translator 1 (MSZP supporter) and Translator 2 (Fidesz supporter). In Section 7.7, some further professional data are provided about the participants. These data were obtained with the help of oral interviews with the participants. These are described in the next section.