Sohár Anikó (szerk.)

Tripliciter dicere

Szokott és szokatlan fordítási jelenségek

3 The questionnaire data

Two questionnaires were compiled and distributed among literary translators in the two countries under study, primarily with the assistance of national literary translators’ associations. The two questionnaires were largely identical in structure and content; however, the second questionnaire was specifically adapted for French respondents. This modification was introduced following feedback indicating that respondents experienced difficulties in calculating their fees using the measurement units employed in the CEATL1 questionnaire framework. To ensure greater clarity and comparability of responses, the fee-related items were therefore adjusted in the version administered to French translators.

The third section of the two questionnaires contained statements designed to explore how respondents perceived and evaluated their own position as literary translators. The results reveal a degree of ambivalence within the profession. While participants reported a generally positive view of their professional situation, less than half of the sample expressed unambiguous agreement with these statements. When these responses are interpreted alongside the findings from the first section—which addressed financial circumstances and workload—it becomes evident that career motivation among literary translators may be shaped by factors extending beyond material conditions alone.

In Bourdieusian terms, the symbolic capital associated with cultural production—such as prestige, intellectual recognition, or creative fulfilment—may partially compensate for limited economic capital. However, the extent to which this compensatory mechanism operates remains uncertain in a field that is structurally positioned as intermediary and frequently characterised, as Jänis (1996) notes, by “servants of other masters.” These findings suggest that the professional habitus of literary translators is defined by a complex negotiation between marginality and prestige, material insecurity and symbolic reward.

The abovementioned third part of the questionnaire included statements measured on a Likert scale, allowing respondents to indicate the extent to which they agreed with each statement. Based on these items, several analytical constructs were created for the purposes of the analysis: Social Recognition, Professional Agency, Professional Protection, and Social Relations. Using these constructs, a comparison between French and Hungarian literary translators was conducted with the assistance of statistician students affiliated with Leiden University.2 An independent samples t-test3 was applied in R (using a custom mi.t.test function).

With regard to the examination of translator visibility, the construct of Social Recognition serves as a primary analytical proxy. In line with existing theoretical approaches to translator visibility and symbolic capital, this construct captures respondents’ perceptions of public awareness, media representation, and societal recognition of literary translators, thereby offering insight into how visibility is experienced and evaluated within the profession.

The steps of the analysis were as follows. Once all relevant items only had these categories, they were all set to be ordered factors. All Likert items consisted of five ordered response categories ranging from “I do not agree at all” to “I completely agree.” These were converted into numeric ordered factors coded from 0 to 4, so that higher scores reflected higher agreement. Reverse-coded items were adjusted using the formula 4-score per item and per respondent to ensure that higher values consistently indicated higher satisfaction.

First, the mean composite score of the given construct was calculated for the French respondents. Second, the same mean composite score was calculated for the Hungarian respondents. Third, it was examined whether the difference between the two means was statistically significant. The level of statistical significance was set at α = 0.05. The p-value indicates the probability of obtaining the observed difference between the two group means, or a more extreme difference, assuming that there is no difference between the two groups in the population. If p < 0.05, the difference between the two groups was considered statistically significant; if p ≥ 0.05, no statistically significant difference was assumed.

The following statements were included in the analysis:

- The general public is familiar with literary translators. (Social Recognition)

- The public image of literary translators is favourable. (Social Recognition)

- The media representation of literary translators is adequate. (Social Recognition)

- Literary translators have access to a wide range of support as recognition of their work. (Social Recognition)

As shown in Figure 5.1., the obtained p-value was 0.04, indicating a statistically significant difference between the two groups. French literary translators appear to be more satisfied with their level of social recognition than Hungarian literary translators. Although the sample is not representative, the results nevertheless outline interesting tendencies that may contribute to a better understanding of differences in the perceived social recognition of literary translators in the French and Hungarian contexts (see also Figure 5.2.).

Figure 5.1. T-test evaluation of differences in perceived social recognition4

	Mean	SD	p-value
French	7.32	3.14
Hungarian	5.67	3.13	.004

Harvard

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Figure 5.2. Distribution of Social Recognition Scores among French and Hungarian Literary Translators5

As we can see, we found that French and Hungarian translators had significantly different means on this construct of Social Recognition, the final stage of the quantitative analysis therefore aimed to examine this difference in greater detail. Rather than analysing the constructs only at the aggregate level, the focus shifted to the individual statements composing each construct. The guiding question at this stage was: Which specific statements within the construct elicit significantly different response patterns from French and Hungarian translators? To address this question, each statement was tested separately in order to identify the dimensions along which the two groups diverged most clearly.

For this purpose, chi-square tests of independence6 were applied. This statistical test assesses whether the distribution of responses across categorical variables is independent or whether observed differences are unlikely to be attributable to chance alone. More specifically, the test compares the observed frequencies of response categories with the frequencies that would be expected if no relationship existed between nationality and response patterns. Where the discrepancy between observed and expected values is sufficiently large, the test indicates a statistically significant association between the variables.

Applied to the present data, the chi-square analysis makes it possible to identify which aspects of social recognition—and, by extension, translator visibility—are perceived differently by French and Hungarian respondents. By doing so, it complements the construct-level comparison by highlighting the specific dimensions of visibility that contribute to the overall differences observed between the two groups. Figure 5.3. presents the results for the item “Readers are familiar with literary translation”, which exhibits the largest difference in this regard.

Figure 5.3. Plot of the frequencies as in the chi-square independence test7

Harvard

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Harvard

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While the quantitative analysis reveals statistically significant differences between French and Hungarian literary translators with regard to perceived social recognition, these results alone cannot account for the underlying meanings, experiences, and contextual factors shaping these perceptions. For this reason, the questionnaire data are complemented by semi-structured qualitative interviews, which make it possible to explore how literary translators themselves interpret social recognition and visibility in their everyday professional lives. The qualitative material thus serves to contextualise, nuance, and interpret the statistical tendencies identified in the survey, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of the socio-economic positioning of literary translators in the two national contexts.

The divergence identified through the chi-square analyses are echoed in the qualitative interview material. In particular, statements that revealed significantly different response patterns between French and Hungarian respondents correspond closely to recurring themes in the interviews.

Although the chi-square analyses indicated significant differences between French and Hungarian respondents on certain statements, the interview data revealed comparable experiences in both national contexts regarding the limited public visibility of literary translators. Interviewees in both national contexts converged on the view that literary translators occupy a position of limited public visibility. Almost all participants, regardless of country, described a situation in which most readers are unaware of translators’ work and often do not even realize that a book has been translated by someone.

1	CEATL (Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires) is the European umbrella organization representing national associations of literary translators. It regularly conducts surveys and publishes reports on the socio-economic conditions of literary translators across Europe, which serve as reference points for comparative research in the field.
2	I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Arslaan Amjad, Mila Madiot, and Zakria Zafar, statistics students who collaborated on the statistical analysis within the framework of a statistical consulting course. Throughout the semester, they offered essential technical and methodological support, contributing their statistical expertise and implementation under the author’s guidance.
3	The t-test is a parametric statistical test used to assess whether the mean values of a continuous variable differ significantly between two groups. In the present study, it is used to compare average responses across groups. The test evaluates whether observed differences in means are unlikely to have occurred by chance, under the assumption of normally distributed data.
4	Figures were prepared with assistance from Arslaan Amjad, Mila Madiot and Zakria Zafar. Plots are based on one randomly selected imputed dataset and are intended solely to illustrate the direction of the observed differences.
5	Figures were prepared with assistance from Arslaan Amjad, Mila Madiot and Zakria Zafar. Plots are based on one randomly selected imputed dataset and are intended solely to illustrate the direction of the observed differences.
6	The chi-square test of independence is a non-parametric statistical test used to examine whether there is a significant association between two categorical variables. In the present study, it is used to assess whether response distributions differ significantly between groups. The test does not indicate the direction or magnitude of the association, but whether an observed difference is unlikely to have occurred by chance.
7	Analysis and figures were made with the help of Arslaan Amjad, Mila Madiot and Zakria Zafar.

Tartalomjegyzék

Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2026

ISBN: 978 963 664 228 0

Irodalom Nyelvészet

A kötet tizennégy fordítástudományi tanulmányt vonultat föl, négy részben. Az első rész a fordítás és egyetem alcímet viseli, három tanulmánya a fordítás és oktatás témakörét járja körbe két kísérlet és egy utánkövetés formájában. A második rész három fordítástudományi elemzést tartalmaz, melyek közül kettő a műfordítók helyzetét vizsgálja, a harmadik pedig magát a fordítástudomány tárgyát osztályozza. A harmadik rész konkrét műfordításokra összpontosít és három esettanulmányt sorakoztat föl: a példák egy olasz történelmi regény angol, német és magyar fordításai, illetve a kanadai-magyar műfordítási áramlatból, valamint egy hazai irodalmi együttműködésből származnak. A negyedik rész öt, kiemelkedő jelentőségű, eredetileg angolul írt fordítástudományi munka magyar fordítását tartalmazza, amelyeket a Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem fordító és tolmács mesterszakos hallgatói, illetve fordítástudományi kutatásokat végző doktoranduszai készítettek.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/sohar-tripliciter-dicere//

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