Abstract
Recent years have seen a rise in the importance of virtual and real-life knowledge sharing communities and communities of practice across many fi elds of private and commercial interest, including professional translation. This article examines the characteristics of knowledge sharing communities in general, identifies their key elements, looks at the motivation for membership and presents an empirical study of life in a thriving virtual translation community. In doing so, it draws on the results of a literature review combined with a participant observation based study and member survey of a major virtual translation community. The results indicate that virtual translation communities can be lively platforms and offer translators a forum not only for sharing expert knowledge and collaborating, but also for keeping in touch with like-minded individuals.
Highlights
Over the past two decades, virtual communities and communities of practice have emerged across many fields of interest and are assuming an increasingly important role in the working or social lives of their members
Little material was available on professional virtual communities and few references could be found to translation communities
This paper provides a theoretical look at virtual communities in general and seeks to identify their core elements
Summary
Over the past two decades, virtual communities and communities of practice have emerged across many fields of interest and are assuming an increasingly important role in the working or social lives of their members. Drawing on the results of a participant observation based study and member survey in a major virtual translation community, it looks at the relevance of such communities for the translation profession. Knowledge sharing in such communities takes many forms, from discussions in parenting forums (Rheingold 1998) and yellow pages to targeted mailing lists or the KudoZ term help system at the translation community ProZ.com (Dickinson 2002).
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