Searching for Cucumis members’ stories

Dear Cucumis members,

please, bear with me through this longer message.

I’ve been a semi-active member of this group for some time now (there’s not much out there right now for my languages, but I’m sticking around 😊). However, in “real life”, I’m also a translation researcher. For some time now, I’ve been fascinated with the question of how the digital age shapes translating. I’m currently working on a PhD thesis on participatory translation in online communities at the University of Vienna and was hoping to be able to benefit from your experience as Cucumis translators for my research.
I’d love to talk to any of you who are willing to share your opinions and experiences, to better understand what participating in a translation community means to you, and what part this has in your everyday lives.

Heads up: whatever data I use is anonymous. I’m planning to look into the discussions on the forum and would very much love to talk to people who have dedicated their time to make this site the special place it is. What especially fascinates me about Cucumis is its spirit of sharing and the dedication of its members. This is why I’d be happy to get the opportunity to talk to any of you who were or have been active here at some point and would like to share with a couple of messages or a short Skype conversation.

I’d like to highlight that, in my research, I’m not trying to include any kind of quality assessment of the texts and translations provided here. What interests me is not how people here translate but what translation and this community means to you. As already mentioned, all information will, of course, be anonymized: I won’t use any user names or clear names in any writing and will remove all personal data (if mentioned by users). If this is something you don’t want, I will also omit the community’s name.

If you want to know more about my project or about me and my work in general, please feel free to contact me at any time (on Cucumis or at regina.rogl@univie.ac.at) and to check out my work at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Regina_Rogl

Since Cucumis is about sharing, as its member I will also contribute with as many translations as I can and look forward to getting to know many of you fellow Cucumis members. If you have any other ideas of how I can pay you back for your time, just let me know! 😊

I might, at some point, contact some of you personally – but, volunteers first, of course! Just drop me a short message if you are interested in contributing... and no worries if you see this message at some later point. The project will still be running for some time. I’m very much looking forward to learning about your personal Cucumis stories!

Best wishes from Vienna,
Regina Rogl / traduxxi