Spring 2025–2026
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alper Kumcu
Email | Website

Announcements

For all assignments, files should be named in the following format: Name_Surname_StudentNumber.docx
(e.g., Alper_Kumcu_12345678.docx) Unless otherwise specified, assignments must be uploaded as .doc or .docx files (not PDF). I wish you all a successful and productive academic semester.

Weekly Schedule

Week 1 – Introduction

February 17, 2026 (Tuesday)

Course overview, expectations, structure, and assessment.

Week 2 – Ethics of Scientific Publication and Open Science

February 24, 2026 (Tuesday)

Topics

  • The big picture in science: Why do we do what we do?
  • Types of publications
  • Journal types, journal indexes, and impact factor
  • Editorial process and peer review
  • Replication and replication crisis
  • Open Science: Data and method sharing, preregistration, preprints

Week 3 – Ethics of Scientific Research

March 3, 2026 (Tuesday)

Topics

  • Unethical research practices (plagiarism, fabrication, falsification)
  • Consent and power relations
  • Privacy, confidentiality, anonymity
  • Data management
  • Conflict of interest
  • Vulnerable groups

Week 4 – Introduction to the Scientific Method and Philosophy of Science

March 10, 2026 (Tuesday)

Topics

  • Observation, hypothesis, testing, falsifiability
  • Positivism, post-positivism, constructivism, critical realism
  • Ethical implications of research paradigms

Week 5 – Participant-Oriented Research I

March 17, 2026 (Tuesday) Moderator 1

Topics

  • Sampling
  • Surveys
  • Validity and reliability
  • Ethical challenges in surveys and ethnographic research

Week 6 – Participant-Oriented Research II

March 24, 2026 (Tuesday) Moderator 2

Topics

  • Interviews and focus groups
  • Participatory and action research ethics
  • Researcher bias and reflexivity
  • Reporting participant-oriented research

Week 7 – Process-Oriented Research I

March 31, 2026 (Tuesday) Moderator 3

Topics

  • Ethical issues in longitudinal and real-time data collection
  • Transparency and reproducibility
  • Ethical challenges in tracking cognitive/behavioral processes

Week 8 – Process-Oriented Research II

April 7, 2026 (Tuesday) Moderator 4

Topics

  • Ethics of eye-tracking, keylogging, biometric data
  • Triangulation of multiple process data sources
  • Data privacy and anonymization
  • Reporting process-oriented research

Week 9 – Product-Oriented Research I

April 14, 2026 (Tuesday) Moderator 5

Topics

  • Ethical considerations in machine translation
  • Evaluating translation and text quality
  • Inter-rater reliability
  • Balancing commercial and academic research interests

Week 10 – Product-Oriented Research II

April 21, 2026 (Tuesday) Moderator 6

Topics

  • Transparency and biases in corpus-based research
  • Ethics of proprietary vs. public datasets

Week 11 – Context-Oriented Research I

April 28, 2026 (Tuesday) Moderator 7

Topics

  • Ethical challenges in institutional and industry research
  • Online communities and digital translation spaces
  • Case study ethics
  • Mixed methods research

Week 12 – Context-Oriented Research II

May 5, 2026 (Tuesday) Moderator 8

Continuation of context-oriented research applications and discussion.

Week 13 – Review Article Presentations

May 12, 2026 (Tuesday)

10-minute presentations.

Week 14 – Holiday

May 19, 2026 (Tuesday)

(No class – Official Holiday)

Evaluation System

Component Number Weight within Semester Contribution to Final Grade
Moderation (1x), participation, article evaluation forms, weekly questions 14 40% 20%
Paper Critique (Response Paper) 1 60% 30%
Final Review Article 1 — 50%
Total     100%

Moderated Discussions, Paper Critique (Midterm) and Review Paper (Final)

Students enrolled in the course are expected to moderate at least one session during the semester, based on that week’s reading list. In addition to the existing readings, the student moderator will add a book chapter and/or research article of their choice for that session.

All students, including the moderator, must prepare at least one discussion question based on the weekly readings and share it with the class in advance. Class discussions will be structured around these questions.

During the weeks in which a research article is assigned, all students are required to complete the Article Evaluation Form and submit it for grading. Article Evaluation Forms are due one day before class.

Midterm: Methodological Critique (Response Paper)

Students are required to write a methodological critique (response paper) of at least 3000 words, which will replace the midterm exam.

  • Students will select their own article from translation studies.
  • The paper must focus on methodological evaluation.
  • Late submissions will be penalised by 10 points per day.

Submission Deadline:
March 31, 2026 (Tuesday) – 23:59

Final: Methodological Review Article

At the end of the semester, students are expected to prepare and submit a methodological review article, which will replace the final exam.

  • The paper must synthesise and critically evaluate research within a defined methodological domain.
  • Late submissions will be penalised by 10 points per day.

Submission Deadline:
June 5, 2026 (Friday) – 23:59

General Bibliography

  • Bell, J. (2010). Doing your research project: A guide for first-time researchers in education, health and social science (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill, Open University Press.
  • Bhattacherjee, A. (2012). Social science research: Principles, methods, and practices. Global Text Project.
  • Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. SAGE.
  • Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics. Oxford University Press.
  • Hatch, E., & Lazaraton, A. (1991). The research manual: Design and statistics for applied linguistics. Heinle & Heinle.
  • McKinley, J., & Rose, H. (2019). The Routledge handbook of research methods in applied linguistics. Routledge.
  • Riazi, A. M. (2016). The Routledge encyclopedia of research methods in applied linguistics. Routledge.
  • Saldanha, G., & O’Brien, S. (2014). Research methodologies in translation studies. Routledge.
  • Williams, J., & Chesterman, A. (2002). The Map: A beginner’s guide to doing research in translation studies. St. Jerome Publishing.

Journals for Selected Papers

  • Target
  • The Translator and Interpreter Trainer
  • Babel
  • Digital Translation
  • FORUM
  • Interpreting
  • Meta
  • Translation Spaces
  • Translation, Cognition & Behavior
  • Other journals (TBA)

Contact

Email: alperkumcu@hacettepe.edu.tr
Web: https://alperkumcu.github.io